s*- 


'*a 


REESE    LIBRARY 

or  TH»: 

UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA. 

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ESSAY 


APPLICATION     OF     ABSTRACT    REASOJVIJVG 

TO   THE 

CHRISTIAN   DOCTRINES: 

ORIGINALLY  PUBLISHED 

AS    AN 

INTRODUCTION    TO    EDWARDS    ON    THE    WILL. 


X$ame     f^^Y 


ry^ 


BY  THE  AUTHOR  OF 
NATURAL  HiSTOJaWtf-aCiTHUSIASM.' 


BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED  BY  CROCKER  AND  BREWSTER, 

47,  Washington  Street: 
NEW-YORK:— JONATHAN  LEAVITT, 

182,  Broadway. 


3r,/oo 
r3 


Entered,  according  to  the  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  one  thousand 
eight  hundred  and  thirty-two,  by  Crocker  &  Brewster,  in  the  Clerk's 
Office  of  the  District  Court  of  Massachusetts. 


a^-7?; 


OF  TEE  ^y 

Few  men,  by  means  or  a  single  small  vol- 
ume, have  added  so  much  to  the  intellectual 
wealth  of  the  world  as  the  author  of  the  'Nat- 
ural History  of  Enthusiasm.'  Almost  the 
whole  book  is  a  clear  enlargement  of  the  field 
of  thought  and  investigation.  The  subject  is 
new,  and  the  manner  of  treating  it  is  new. 
Giving  such  a  work  to  the  world  is  like  adding 
to  an  empire  a  before  undiscovered  territory. 

In  the  following  Essay  this  author  has  fully 
sustained  the  character  which  he  acquired  by 
the  work  named  above,  of  being  a  liberal  con- 
tributor to  the  common-stock  of  thought. 
The  subject  is  surely  one  of  great  practical 
moment,  bearing  directly  on  the  method  of 
explaining  and  discussing  the  Christian  doc- 
trines; and,  of  course,  on  the  labors  of  the 
preacher  and  the  student  of  theology.  It  is 
quite  safe  to  say  that  half  of  all  the  theological 
disputation  which   has     prevailed   since   the 


Christian  era,  agitating  the  minds  of  men  and 
distracting  the  Church,  has  had  its  origin  in 
attempts  to  make  revealed  truth  harmonize 
with  systems  of  intellectual  philosophy.  It 
may  fairly  be  doubted  whether,  on  the  whole, 
these  attempts  have  at  all  advanced  the  cause 
of  genuine  orthodoxy  and  godliness.  It  is 
almost  certain,  that,  if  the  same  power  of 
thought,  and  the  same  learning  had  been 
applied  with  equal  zeal  to  a  simple,  apostol- 
ical exhibition  of  the  great  truths  and  motives 
of  revelation,  and  to  the  inculcation  of  the 
spirit  of  the  gospel,  the  result  would  have 
been  far  more  auspicious  to  the  cause  of  truth 
and  human  salvation. 

The  serious  and  candid  manner  in  which 
the  inquiry  respecting  the  relation  that  the 
abstract  doctrine  of  liberty  and  necessity  bears 
to  revealed  truth  is  here  pursued,  and  the 
purely  evangelical  and  catholic  spirit  which 
pervades  this  as  well  as  the  other  principal 
work  of  this  author,  are  most  exemplary.  The 
reader  can  hardly  fail  to  peruse  these  pages 
confiding  in  the  writer  as  an  honest  and  safe 
guide;  and  of  finding,  at  the  cl6se,  his  own 
views  of  the  subject  corrected  and  enlarged. 

Boston,  Jan,  1 832. 


'UNIvSESITY 
ESSAY. 


SECTION    I. 


AAiJL^ 


If  it  be  the  prerogative  of  philosophical  writings  to 
command  a  more  grave  attention,  and  to  challenge  a 
higher  rank  in  literature  than  is  accorded  to  works  of 
imagination,  it  is  also  their  fate  more  often  to  fall  into  .  -^^ 
oblivion;  or  even  if  remembered  and  preserved,  to  be  i^^  ^A- 
superseded,  and  to  forfeit  the  honors  they  once  and 
long  enjoyed  as  canons  of  science.  The  reason  of  this 
difference  is  obvious;  for  in  the  one  class  of  composi- 
tions, an  end  is  proposed  which  may  be  attained  in  a 
thousand  ways,  and  in  the  pursuit  of  which  genius  , 
ensures  its  own  success.  But  in  the  other  class,  where  / 
the  discovery  of  truth  is  the  single  object,  success  de-  , 
pends  not  merely  upon  zeal  and  ability,  but  upon  the  (t 
good  fortune  also  which  may  lead  the  inquirer  upon 
the  one  only  track  amid  innumerable  devious  paths. 

A/ 


'.— •'f 


••f    •'  -— .  t 


14 


The  mass  of  ancient  literature  that  has  reached  mod- 
ern times,  consists  in  great  part  of  those  products  of 
mind,  the  immortaUty  of  which  has  not  at  all  resuhed 
from  their  value  as  vehicles  of  truth:  yet  are  they  still 
perused  with  delight — are  handed  down  as  inestimable 
treasures  from  age  to  age — pass  in  the  course  of  civilis- 
ation from  clime  to  clime — and  (go  where  they  may) 
awaken  always,  in  every  cultured  mind,  the  liveliest 
emotions  of  pleasure.  Along  with  the  poetry,  the  ora- 
tory, and  the  histories  of  a  bright  and  distant  time,  we 
have  received  also,  in  no  small  quantity,  the  philosophy 
of  the  same  era.  Yet  is  it  a  fact,  that  of  this  prodigious 
assemblage,  a  single  small  treatise  *  alone  retains  its 
place  and  office  as  a  source  of  knowledge,  or  is  actually 
'  extant  as  an  efficient  instrument  of  instruction.  Never- 
theless, it  is  far  from  being  true  that  Pindar,  Hesiod, 
and  Homer,  or  that  Anacreon,  Sophocles  and  Aristo- 
phanes, were  men  of  a  higher  order  of  intellect  than 
those  philosophers,  their  contemporaries,  not  a  sentence 
of  whose  writings  has  been  conserved;  or  than  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  whose  works,  though  handed  down  to 
us,  exist  in  our  libraries  much  rather  as  literature  than 
as  philosophy. 

The  arrogant  chiefs  of  the  Grecian  philosophical 
sects  looked  probably  with  scorn  upon  the  versifiers, 
and  dramatists,  and  orators  of  their  day,  and  deemed 
them  triflers.  And  yet  is  it  these  who  still  command  the 
admiration  of  mankind;  while  those,  for  the  most  part, 
do  but  hover  in  the  recollections  of  the  learned,  as 

*  Euclid's  Elements. 


15 

phantoms  of  an  obsolete  intellectual  domination.  But) 
the  one  strove  for  a  prize  which  is  always  attainable  by- 
genius; — the  other  reared  their  fame  on  the  proud  pre- 
tension that  they  were  teachers  of  truth:  their  claim 
was  disputed  and  disproved;  and  their  ambition  has 
long  ago  been  trampled  in  the  dust. 

Works  of  science  lose  their  credit  as  such,  either  in 
consequence  of  the  refutation  and  entire  rejection  of  the 
principles  they  maintain;  or  they  are  gradually  super- 
seded, in  the  natural  course  of  improvement,  by  better 
digested  systems,  founded  on  the  same  general  doc- 
trines. In  instances  of  this  latter  sort,  the  discoverers 
of  certain  great  truths  which  have  become  the  property 
of  the  intellectual  commonweaUh,  though  they  still  hold 
their  titles  of  honor,  retain  little  real  influence,  and  are 
more  often  spoken  of  than  read;  or  are  read  only  by 
the  few  who  make  the  history  of  science  their  peculiar 
study. 

As  examples  of  the  former  class,  we  might  mention 
the  pseudo-scientific  doctrines  of  Plato — those  splendid 
errors  which  extinguished  the  then  existing  light  of  true 
philosophy;  and  the  greater  portion  of  the  physical  dis- 
quisitions of  Aristotle;  and  the  astronomy  of  Ptolemy; 
and  then,  in  long  array,  and  immeasurable  bulk,  the 
alchymy,  and  the  astrology,  and  the  physics,  and  the 
metaphysics,  of  the  sixteen  centuries,  during  which  the 
human  mind  dreamed  ingeniously,  rather  than  employed 
itself  waking  upon  the  affairs  of  the  real  world. 

Instances  of  the  second  sort  (beside  the  single  one 
above  mentioned)  are  hardly  to  be  produced  from  the 
extant  remains  of  ancient  literature;  unless  indeed  we 


16 


were  to  consider  as  works  of  science  the  writings  of  the 
Grecian  and  Roman  geographers,  which  though  superse- 
ded by  the  more  exact  information  of  modern  times,  still 
exist,  not  simply  as  classical  remains,  but  as  sources  of 
knowledge.*  Passing  them,  the  writings  of  the  fathers 
of  the  modern  astronomy  may  be  named  as  examples 
completely  in  point;  for  these  (the  modern  astronomy 
being  assumed  as  in  truth  the  system  of  nature)  have 
possessed  themselves  of  an  immortality  which  must  be 
coeval  with  the  existence  of  science.  Nevertheless,  it 
has  happened,  and  indeed  it  is  a  distinction  belonging 
to  genuine  discoveries  in  science,  that  the  writings  which 
opened  the  path  of  truth  have  ceased  to  be  read,  except 
by  the  curious,  even  while  still  regarded  as  the  spring- 
heads of  real  knowledge.  It  was  the  glory  of  Coperni- 
cus, of  Tycho,  of  Kepler,  and  of  Galileo,  to  say  to  their 
successors,  "Leave  us,  and  go  on."f 

Yet  is  it  true  of  the  few  works  that  take  rank  in  the 
highest  class  of  philosophical  literature,  that,  though 
they  may  have  become  obsolete,  either  because  essen- 
tially erroneous,  or  because  superseded,  they  still  chal- 
lenge attention  and  respect  as  products  of  mind;  and 
though  no  longer  valuable  as  guides  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge,  are  precious  as  works  of  genius,  and  as  ex- 
hibitions of  an  athletic  force  of  intellect.     It  is  in  this 


*  We  should  perhaps  say  topographers:  topography  be'nig  more  remote 
from  the  fields  of  speculation  than  any  other  branch  of  learning,  was  less 
vitiated  than  an}'  other  branch  among  the  ancientsj  and  their  writings  &f 
this  class  retain  their  value  to  the  present  day. 

t  Is  the  'Trincipia"  now  taking  its  place  in  this   class  of  supersede4, 
philosophy?    Though  this  were  the  fact,  Newton  would  lose  none  of  his 
fame. 


17 

sense  that  the  unmatched  writings  of  Aristotle  must  be 
immortal;  and  thus  that  the  best  of  his  expounders  may 
continue  to  be  read:  and  it  is  on  this  ground  also  that 
Hobbes,  and  Des  Cartes,  and  Malebranche,  and 
Berkeley,  and  Hume,  and  Hutcheson,  and  Hartley,  re- 
tain, and  will,  perhaps,  long  retain,  their  place  in  the 
literature  of  Europe,  and  be  perused  by  a  future  and 
more  enlightened  generation,  to  whom  the  absurdities 
and  whimsical  sophisms  with  which  they  abound,  shall 
seem  even  more  frivolous  than  they  do  to  ourselves. 

Whatever  may  in  the  next  age  be  the  fate  of  the  i> 

"Inquiry  concerning  Freedom  of  Will,"  (in  the  present 
age  it  holds  all  its  honors  and  authority),  it  may  safely 
be  predicted  that,  at  least  as  an  instance  of  exact  analy- 
sis, of  profound   or  perfect  abstraction,  of  conclusive 
]ogic,  and  of  calm  discussion,  this  celebrated  essay  will 
long  support  its  reputation,  and  will  continue  to  be  used 
as  a  classic  material  in  the  business  of  intellectual  edu- 
cation.    If  literary  ambition  had  been,  which  certainly 
it  was  not,  the  active  element  of  the  author's  mind   (as 
it  was  the  single  motive  in  the  mind  oi  his  contemporary      .      ^  _^ 
and  admirer  Hume),  and  if  he  could  have  foreseen  the    y       /<.« 
reputation  of  his  "Essay  on  Free  Will,"  he  need  have    P^  " 
envied  very  few  aspirants  to  philosophic  fame.     What  ^U  i  - 
higher  praise  could  a  scientific  writer  wish  for,  than  that 
j  of  having,  by  a  small  and  single  dissertation,  reduced  a 
numerous,  a  learned,  and  a  powerful  party,  in  his  own  * 
and  other  countries  (and  from  his  own  day  to  the  pres- 


*  We  claim  Edwards  as  an  Englishman:  he  was  such  in  every  respect 
but  the  accident  of  birth  in  a  distant  province  of  the  empire. 

*2 


18 


ent  time)  to  the  sad  necessity  of  making  a  blank  protest 
against  the  argument  and  inference  of  the  book,  and  of 
saying,  "The  reasoning  of  Edwards  must  be  a  sophism; 
for  it  overthrows  our  doctrine."  And  then,  if  we  turn 
from  theology  to  science — from  divines  to  philosophers, 
we  see  the  modest  pastor  of  the  Calvinists  of  Northamp- 
ton assigned  to  a  seat  of  honor  among  sages,  and  allow- 
ed (if  he  will  lay  aside  his  faith  and  his  Bible)  to  speak 
and  to  utter  decisions  as  a  master  of  science. 

It  might  indeed  have  been  well  if  the  devout  Ed- 
wards *  could  have  foreseen  the  consequences  that  have 
actually  resulted  from  the  mode  in  which  he  conducted 
his  argument;  for  in  that  case,  assuredly  he  would  not 
have  allowed  to  sceptics  the  opportunity  of  triumphing 
by  his  means  over  faith  as  well  as  reason.  He  would, 
then,  instead  of  abandoning  the  ground  of  abstract  rea- 
soning as  soon  as  he  had  achieved  the  overthrow  of  the 
metaphysical  error  of  his  opponents,  have  carried  it 
(and  he  was  able  to  do  so)  to  its  utmost  extent,  and 
have  so  established  the  responsibility  of  man,  as  should 
have  compelled  infidels  either  not  to  avail  themselves  at 
all  of  his  proof  of  universal  causation,  or  to  yield  to  his 
proof  of  the  reality  of  religion. 

The  diffidence  and  the  Christian  humility,  or  the  re- 
tired habits  of  the  American  divine,  prevented,  perhaps, 
his  entertaining  the  thought  that  he  might  be  listened  to 
by  philosophers,  as  well  as  by  his  brethren,  the  minis- 
ters of  religion.  Supposing  himself  to  write  only  for 
those  who  acknowledged,  as  cordially   as  he  did,  the 

*  See  note  A  at  the  end  of  the  Essay. 


L 

OF  THE 

authority  of  Scripture,  he  scrupled  not  to  m al<i&  o ot  }^pA*p  Vf'^p 

chain  of  reasoning,  indifferently,  of  abstractions  andisfe  ^"^^ 

texts;  and  especially  in  the  latter  portion  of  his  treatise, 

readily  took  the  short  Scriptural  road  to  a  conclusion, 

which  must  have  been  circuitously  reached  in  any  other 

way.     Just  and  peremptory  as  these  conclusions  may 

be,  they  commanded  no  respect  out  of  the  pale  of  the 

church;  nay,  they  rather  excited  the  scorn  of  those 

who  naturally  said — If  these  principles  could  have  been 

established  by  abstract  argument,  a  thinker  so  profound 

as  Edwards,  and  so  fond  of  metaphysics,   would  not 

have  proved  them  by  the  Bible. 

Sceptics  of  all  classes  (it  has  ever  been  the  practice 
and  policy  of  the  powers  of  evil  to  build  with  plundered 
materials),  availing  themselves  greedily  of  the  abstract 
portions  of  the  inquiry,  and  contemning  its  Biblical  con- 
nectives and  conclusions,  carried  on  the  unfinished  rea- 
soning in  their  own  manner;  and  when  they  had  com- 
pleted their  edifice  of  gloom  and  fear,  turned  impu- 
dently to  the  faithful,  and  said — "Nay,  quarrel  not  with 
our  labors;  the  foundations  were  laid  by  one  of  your- 
selves!" 

Notwithstanding  this  unhappy  and  accidental  result 
of  the  argument  for  moral  causation,  as  conducted  by 
Edwards,  this  celebrated  treatise  must  be  allowed'  to 
have  achieved  an  important  service  for  Christianity,  in- 
asmuch as  it  has  stood  like  a  bulwark  in  front  of  princi- 
ples which,  whether  or  not  they  may  hitherto  have  been 
stated  in  the  happiest  manner,  are  of  such  consequence, 
that  if  they  were  once,  and  universally  abandoned  by 
the  church,  the  church  itself  would  not  long  make  good 


20 


its  opposition  to  infidelity.  Let  it  be  granted  that  Cal- 
vinism has  often  existed  in  a  state  of  mixture  with  crude, 
or  presumptuous,  or  preposterous  dogmas.  Yet  surely, 
whoever  is  competent  to  take  a  calm,  an  independent, 
and  a  truly  philosophic  survey  of  the  Christian  system, 
and  can  calculate  also  the  balancings  of  opinion — ^the 
antitheses  of  belief,  will  grant,  that  if  Calvinism,  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  term,*  were  quite  exploded,  a 
long  time  could  not  elapse  before  evangelical  Armini- 
anism  would  find  itself  driven  helplessly  into  the  gulf 
that  had  yawned  to  receive  its  rival;  and  to  this  catas- 
trophe must  quickly  succeed  the  triumph  of  the  dead 
rationalism  of  Neology;  and  then  that  of  Atheism. 

Whatever  notions  of  an  exaggerated  sort  may  belong 
to  some  Calvinists,  Calvinism,  as  distinguished  from 
Arminianism,  encircles  or  involves  Great  Truths, 
which,  whether  dimly  or  clearly  discerned — whether 
defended  in  Scriptural  simplicity  of  language,  or  de- 
formed by  grievous  perversions,  will  never  be  abandoned 
while  the  Bible  continues  to  be  devoutly  read;  and 
which,  if  they  might  indeed  be  subverted,  would  drag 
to  the  same  ruin  every  doctrine  of  revealed  religion. 
Zealous,  dogmatical,  and  sincere  Arminians  little  think 
how  much  they  owe  to  the  writer  who,  more  than  any 
other  in  modern  times,  has  withstood  their  inconsiderate 
endeavors  to  impugn  certain  prominent  articles  of  the 
Reformation.     Nay,  they  think  not  that,  to  the  exist- 


♦  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  that  the  term  Calvinism  is  used  without 
any  reference  to  the  particular  opinions  of  the  illustricus  divine  who  has 
given  his  name  to  a  system  of  doctrine  much  older  than  the  age  of  the 
Reformation. 


HBP 


21 


ence  of  Calvinism  they  owe  their  own,  as  Christians. 
Yet  as  much  as  this  might  be  affirmed,  and  made  good; 
even  though  he  who  should  undertake  the  task  were  so 
to  conduct  his  argument  as  might  make  six  Calvinists 
in  ten  his  enemies. 

Yet  it  will  not  be  affirmed  (unless  by  the  advocates 
of  a  party)  that  the  treatise  on  the  Will  is  in  itself  com- 
plete; or  that  it  is  open  to  no  reasonable  objection  on 
the  part  of  those  who  refuse  to  admit  its  conclusions; 
or  that  it  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  in  this  department 
of  theological  science.  Very  far,  we  think,  is  this  from 
being  the  fact.  Edwards  achieved^  indeed,  his  imme- 
diate object — that  of  exposing  to  contempt,  in  all  its 
evasions,  the  Arminian  notion  of  contingency,  as.  the 
blind  law  of  human  volitions:  and  he  did  more; — he 
effectively  redeemed  the  doctrines  called  Calvinistic 
from  that  scorn  with  which  the  irreligious  party,,  within 
and  without  the  pale  of  Christianity,  would  fain  have 
overwhelmed  them: — he  taught  the  world  to  be  less 
flippant;  and  there  is  reason  also  to  surmise  (though  the 
facts  are  not  to  be  distinctly  adduced)  that,  in  the  re- 
action which  of  late  has  counterpoised  the  once  tri- 
umphant Arminianism  of  English  epispocal  divinity,  the 
mfluence  of  Edwards  has  been  much  greater  than  those 
who  have  yielded  to  it  have  always  confessed. 

But  if  the  inquiry  on  Freedom  of  Will  is  regarded, 
and  it  ought  to  be  so  regarded,  as  a  scientific  treatise, 
then  we  must  vehemently  protest  against  that  mixture 
(already  alluded  to)  of  metaphysical  demonstrations 
and  Scriptural  evidence,  which  runs  through  it,  break- 
ing up  the  chain   of  argumentation — disparaging  tlie 


22 


authority  of  the  Bible,  by  making  it  part  and  parcel 
with  disputable  abstractions;  and  worse,  destroying  both 
the  lustre  and  the  edge  of  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  by 
using  it  as  a  mere  weapon  of  metaphysical  warfare. 
Yet,  in  justice  to  Edwards  it  must  be  remembered,  that 
while  pursuing  this  course,  he  did  but  follow  in  the  track 
of  all  who  had  gone  before  him.  To  this  ancient  evil 
we  must  again  adv'ert. 

But,  besides  the  improper  mixture  of  abstract  reason- 
ing with  documentary  proof,  the  attentive  reader  of  Ed- 
wards will  detect  a  confusion  of  another  sort,  less  palpa- 
ble indeed,  but  of  not  less  fatal  consequence  to  the  con- 
sistency of  a  philosophical  argument;  and  which,  though 
sanctioned  by  the  highest  authorities,  in  all  times,  and 
recommended  by  the  example  of  the  most  eminent  wri- 
ters, even  to  the  present  moment,  must,  so  long  as  it  is 
adhered  to,  hold  intellectual  philosophy  far  in  the  rear 
of  the  physical  and  mathematical  sciences.  For  the 
present  it  is  enough  just  to  point  out  the  error  of  method 
alluded  to,  remitting  the  further  consideration  of  it  to  a 
subsequent  page. 

It  is  that  of  mingling  purely  abstract  propositions — 
propositions  strictly  metaphysical^'^  with  facts  belonging 
to  the  physiology  of  the  human  mind.  Even  the  reader 
who  is  scarcely  at  all  familiar  with  abstruse  science, 
will,  if  he  follow  our  author  attentively,  be  perpetually 
conscious  of  a  vague  dissatisfaction,  or  latent  suspicion, 
that  some  fallacy  has  passed  into  the  train  of  proposi- 

*  The  reader  is  referred  also  to  a  subsequent  page  of  this  Essay  for  a 
definition  of  the  sense  in  which  the  writer  employs  the  term  metaphysics, 
as  distinguished  from  the  physiology  of  the  mind. 


23 


tions,  although  the  linking  of  syllogisms  seems  perfect. 
This  suspicion  will  increase  in  strength  as  he  proceeds, 
and  will  at  length  condense  itself  into  the  form  of  a 
protest  against  certain  conclusions,  notwithstanding 
their  apparently  necessary  connection  with  the  premises. 

The  condition  of  those  purely  abstract  truths  which 
constitute  the  higher  metaphysics  is,  that  they  might 
(though  no  good  purpose  could  be  answered  by  doing 
so)  be  expressed  by  algebraic  or  other  arbitrary  signs; 
and  in  that  form  made  to  pass  through  the  process  of 
syllogistic  reasoning;  certain  conclusions  being  attained 
which  must  be  assented  to,  independently  of  any  refer- 
ence to  the  actual  constitution  of  human  nature — or  to 
that  of  other  sentient  beings.  These  abstractions  stand 
parallel  with  the  truths  of  pure  mathematics. — And  it 
may  be  said  of  both,  that  the  human  mind  masters  them, 
comprehends  and  perceives  their  properties  and  rela- 
tions, and  feels  that  the  materials  of  its  cogitation  lie  all 
within  its  grasp,  are  exposed  to  its  inspection,  and  need 
not  be  gathered  from  observation.  To  such  abstractions 
the  artificial  methods  of  logic  are  applicable. 

Not  so  to  our  reasonings  when  the  actual  conforma- 
tion of  either  ihe  material  world,  or  of  the  animal  sys- 
tem, or  of  the  mental,  is  the  subject  of  inquiry.  Logic 
may  place  in  their  true  relative  position  things  already 
known;  but  it  aids  us  not  at  all  (the  logic  of  syllogism)  in 
the  discovery  of  things  unknown.  Hence  it  follows, 
that  if  an  inquiry,  the  ultimate  facts  of  which  relate  to 
the  agency  and  moral  condition  of  man,  be  conducted 
in  the  method  that  is  proper  to  pure  abstractions,  and 
if,  as  often  as  the  argument  demands  it,  new  materials 
are  brought  in,  untocamined,  from  the  actual  conforma- 


24 


tion  of  the  human  mind,  very  much  may  be  taken  for 
granted,  and  will  flow  in  the  stream  of  logical  demon- 
stration, which  in  itself  is  at  least  questionable,  and 
which,  whether  true  or  false,  should  be  stated  as  simple 
matter  of  fact,  and  by  no  means  confounded  with  those 
unchangeable  truths  which  would  be  what  they  are, 
though  no  such  being  as  man  existed.  This  error  of 
method — an  inveterate  one — is  as  if  a  mathematician  in 
calculating  (for  example)  the  necessary  dimensions  of  a 
timber  which,  being  supported  at  its  two  extremities, 
was  to  sustain  a  given  weight,  were,  in  carrying  on  the 
mathematical  part  of  his  reasoning,  to  assume  the  speci- 
fic properties  of  timber  as  an  invariable  abstraction;  or 
were  either  to  leave  out  of  the  process  all  consideration 
of  the  density,  compressibility,  and  tenacity  of  oak,  ash, 
fir,  elm,  &ic.,  or  were  to  take  certain  facts  of  this  sort 
upon  vulgar  report,  and  blend  them  with  his  calcula- 
tions, without  having  experimentally  informed  himself 
of  the  physical  constitution  of  the  materials  in  question. 

In  the  scientific  procedures  of  the  mechanic  arts,  the 
ultimate  result,  whether  it  be  a  building,  a  bridge,  or  a 
machine,  usually  combines  three  perfectly  distinct  and 
independent  series  of  truths,  or  classes "  of  causation; 
namely,  1st,  the  mathematical  relations  of  extension  or 
number;  2d,  the  mechanical  laws  of  gravitation,  motion, 
friction,  &ic.;  3d,  the  qualities  and  properties  (in  part 
mechanical,  in  part  chemical)  of  the  several  materials 
that  are  to  be  employed  or  wrought  upon. 

Now  these  distinct  principles  or  truths  must  be  sepa- 
rately considered;  and  each  in  the  method  proper  to 
itself;  and  must  then  be  combined  in  the  single  result. 
It  is  thus  alone  that  the  arch  can  be  made  to  sustain 


25 

itself  and  its  intended  burden; — that  the  roof  will  rest 
on  its  plate; — that  the  engine  will  perform  its  compli- 
cated part;  or  the  simplest  implement  execute  its  des- 
tined drudgery.* 

But  owing,  in  part,  to  the  abstruse  nature  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  to  its  not  being  susceptible  of  palpable  proof; 
and,  in  part,  to  the  unhappy  accidents  which  in  every 
age  have  beset  intellectual  philosophy,  problems  belong- 
ing to  the  science  of  mind  have  commonly  been  at- 
tempted to  be  solved,  on  the  principle  of  confounding 
the  abstract  with  the  physical.  And  then  if,  in  addition 
to  this  capital  error,  there  have  been  mingled  with  the 
process  the  jargon  of  religious  factions,  and  with  that, 
the  antagonist  dogmas  of  the  enemies  of  all  rehgion,  the 
smallest  probability  of  attaining  a  satisfactory  result  has 
been  removed;  and  the  actual  issue  of  the  controversy, 
instead  of  going  calmly  to  its  place,  like  the  conclusions 
of  physical  science,  has  served  only  to  exacerbate  new 
contentions,  either  among  theologians,  or  between  them 
and  the  assailants  of  Christianity. 

In  the  case,  therefore,  of  our  availing  ourselves  of  the 
reasoning  of  a  writer,  like  President  Edwards,  it  behov^es  j  %aaM^t 
us  to  take  heed  that  we  do  justice,  at  once,  to  him  and 
to  ourselves.  To  him,  by  not  imputing  to  him,  indi- 
vidually,  a  blame  which  belongs  in  common  to  all  meta- 
physico-theologlcal  writers,  of  every  age — not  one  per- 
haps excepted.  And  to  ourselves,  by  assenting  to  his 
argument  only  so  far  as  it  is  purely  of  an  abstract  kind; 
W'hile  w^e  hold  ourselves  aloof  from  every  conclusion 

*  See  note  B. 


26 


which  involves  physiological  facts  of  a  kind  either  not 
considered  by  the  author,  or  not  known  to  him. 


SECTION    11. 

Success  in  the  prosecution  of  a  scientific  inquiry* 
demands  that,  if  the  desired  result,  or  the  ultimate  fact, 
be  of  a  simple  kind,  we  should,  1st,  Seek  for  it  among 
the  class  of  truths  to  which  it  actually  belongs;  *  and 
2d,  That,  in  conducting  the  process,  we  exclude  the 
facts  and  avoid  the  methods  proper  to  other  branches 
of  knowledge.  Or  if  the  ultimate  fact  be  complex, 
involving  truths  of  different  classes,  it  is  necessary  that 
we  pursue  each  class  separately,  and  in  its  proper  man- 
ner, and  at  last  truly  combine  the  several  products. 

Of  what  sort,  then,  we  may  ask,  is  the  inquiry  con- 
cerning human  agency,  free  will,  liberty,  and  necessity? 
In  other  words:  to  what  department  of  science  does  the 
controversy  belong,  and  on  what  ground  is  it  to  be 
argued?  Now,  in  order  that  every  probable  supposition 
may  be  included,  and  that  we  may  disengage  ourselves 
from  such  as  are  groundless,  let  it  be  affirmed,  succes- 
lively,  of  this  question,  that  it  is  one 

I.  Of  common  life,  affecting  the  personal,  social,  and 
political  conduct  of  mankind; 

II.  Of  theology  and  Christian  doctrine^ 
JII.  Of  the  physiology  of  man; 

ly.  Of  the  higher  aietaphysics. 

*  See  note  C. 


27 


It  is  proposed  to  consider,  as  briefly  as  possible,  the 
question  of  moral  causation  and  necessity  separately 
under  these  heads.  And  first,  suppose  it  to  be  affirmed 
that  the  controversy  may,  in  its  result,  affect  the  con- 
duct of  common  life,  or  ought  to  influence  the  feelings 
or  behavior  of  men  in  their  ordinary  transactions,  pri- 
vate and  public. 

Unless  for  the  sake  of  an  important  inference  (soon 
to  be  mentioned),  it  might  well  be  deemed  in  the  last 
degree  trivial  and  impertinent,  ev^en  to  assume  as  at  all 
reasonable  the  supposition,  that  the  substantial  interests 
of  life  are  liable  to  interruption  or  interference  from 
abstruse  dogmas  of  any  kind,  and  especially  of  such  as 
are  advanced  in  the  controversy  concerning  liberty  and 
necessity.  There  has,  indeed,  been  a  season  among 
our  near  neighbors,  during  which  an  interference  of  this 
sort  was  allowed;  *  and  it  may  also  have  found  indul- 
gence within  the  circle  of  German  philosophy;  and  it  has 
always  had  a  place  among  the  mystics  of  Asia.f  But 
in  England,  the  force  of  common  sense  is  far  too  great, 
and  the  credit  of  metaphysics  is,  happily,  far  too  small, 
for  any  room  to  be  granted  to  extravagances  of  this 
order.  Or,  were  it  otherwise,  the  supposition  of  a 
practical  consequence  belonging  to  the  question  would 
stand  discharged  by  the  leave  of  even  the  most  resolute 
impugners  of  the  common  sense  and  common  feelings 
of  mankind,  who,  not  only  by  their  personal  conduct, 
but  by  explicit  admissions,  excuse  their  fellow-men 
from  paying  any  more  respect  to  their  sublime  demon- 
strations, than  is  ordinarily  thought  due  to  the  inexpli- 

*  Sec  noie  D.  f  See  note  E. 


^■^.M 


28 


cable   whims   of  men   who   abound   in   learning   and 
leisure."^ 

Yet  let  us  for  a  moment  contend,  as  if  in  serious  con- 
troversy with  the  supposition,  that  such  doctrines  as  the 
Pyrrhonic  or  the  Stoic;  or  the  modern  doctrine  of 
necessity;  or  if  there  be  yet  in  the  womb  of  chaos  any 
other  dogma  of  similar  quality,  that  these  high  principles 
have  a  claim  to  be  listened  to  before  men  can,  with 
reason  or  consistency,  proceed  to  transact  the  business 
of  life,  or  with  propriety  give  indulgence  to  certain  vul- 
gar emotions. 

Now,  we  should  overturn  a  preposterous  pretension 
of  this  sort  in  more  ways  than  one;  as,  first,  we  should, 
by  a  loose  technical  argument,  procure  a  relegation  of 
any  such  controversy  from  the  haunts  of  real  life  in  this 
manner.  Let  it  be  supposed,  that,  in  due  course  of 
law,  and  after  hearing  and  sifting  of  evidence,  a  prisoner 
at  the  bar  has  received  sentence  of  death;  but  his  legal 
advocate  pleads  an  arrest  of  judgment,  on  the  ground, 
we  will  say,  of  an  error  in  the  arraignment.  The  court 
assents  to  the  propriety  of  this  sort  of  interruption — ad- 
mits the  objection  to  be  formal  and  pertinent — examines 
with  care  the  allegation,  and  finding  it  valid,  allows  to 
the  convicted  man  the  benefit  of  the  demurrer.  But 
let  it  be  imagined  that  the  prisoner's  legal  defender, 

*■  "When  the  Pyrrhonian  awakes  from  his  dream,  he  will  be  the  first  to 
join  in  the  laugh  against  himself,  and  to  confess  that  a!l  his  objections  are 
mere  amusement,  and  can  have  no  other  tendency  than  to  shew  the 
whimsical  condition  of  mankind,  who  must  act  and  reason,  and  believe 
though  they  are  not  able,  by  ihv^ir  most  diligent  inquiry,  to  satisfy  them- 
selvesconcerning  the  foundation  of  these  operations,  or  (o  remove  the 
objections  that  may  he  raised  against  them." — Hume's  Inquiry  concern- 
ing the  Human  Understanding,  sect.  xii.  part  2. 


J^      ^^  OF  TUB       ^, 

destitute  of  any  such  fit  objection,  wherewith  to  pro^lig*j^D*ll^^^ 
the  life  of  his  client,  stands  up  to  impugn  the  goocT 
policy,  or  the  abstract  justice,  or  the  morality  of  the 
statute  under  which  he  has  been  condemned;  or  he 
affirms  that  this  enactment  is  contrary  to  the  spirit  of 
the  constitution,  and  is  in  itself  an  outrage  upon  unalien- 
able rights.  In  an  argument  of  this  sort,  he  might 
happen  to  have  all  reason  and  good  principles  on  his 
side;  and  might,  if  permitted  to  speak,  actually  bring 
I  udge,  jury,  and  the  crowd  around,  to  think  with  him- 
self. But  the  court  peremptorily  excludes  any  such 
impertinence,  though  valid  in  itself,  as  utterly  improper 
to  the  place  and  occasion;  nor  for  a  moment  to  be 
listened  to,  where  laws  are  to  be  put  in  force — not 
repealed  or  amended. 

And  yet  this  very  same  argument,  overruled  and  re- 
jected in  a  court  of  justice,  may  be  carried  into  the 
senate,  and  shall  there  be  respectfully  entertained. 
Senators  will  hear  and  weigh  reasons  which  judges 
repudiate.  The  ground  of  this  practical  procedure  is 
manifest; — every  one  to  his  business.  Tn  the  senate, 
motives  of  policy,  and  legal  consistences,  and  special 
necessities  of  state,  together  with  arguments  of  abstract 
or  universal  justice;  and  even,  to  some  extent,  reHgious 
considerations,  are  brought  together  from  all  sides,  and 
go  to  influence  the  legislative  decision.  Nevertheless, 
limits  are  imposed  upon  the  indulgence  given  to  senato- 
rial argumentation.  Were  it,  for  instance,  to  happen 
that  a  legislative  body  included  a  mere  theorist,  or  dab- 
bler in  philosophy;  and  were  such  a  one,  instead  of 
alleging  some  of  the  topics  just  mentioned,  to  advancej, 
*3 


30 


as  a  motive  for  repealing  a  penal  statute  certain  doc- 
trines of  phrenological  science,  and  were  to  say,  that 
inasmuch  as  the  murderer  and  the  thief  are  the  pitiable 
victims  of  an  unhappy  cerebal  malformation,  and  in  de- 
priving their  fellows  of  life  or  chattels  do  but  yield  to  an 
organic  necessity,  springing  from  a  certain  too-much- 
bloated  inch  of  brain — therefore,  to  pursue  crime  by  pun- 
ishment is  only  to  add  cruelty  to  misfortune; — we  say,  in 
such  a  case,,  the  improper  argument  would  be  overruled. 
Or,  instead  of  the  phrenologist,  let  it  be  supposed  that 
a  stanch  and  consistent  disciple  of  the  modern  "Philos- 
ophy of  the  Human  Mind"  announces  to  his  peers  the 
now  demonstrated  fact,  "That  virtue  and  vice  are  mere 
relations — absolute  nonentities,  except  just  so  far  as  they 
are  thought  of  and  perceived  by  other  minds;  and  not 
more  real  or  positive  than  the  most  recondite  properties 
of  a  triangle."*  Let  him  thence  argue  that,  to  inflict 
the  pains  of  death  upon  an  unfortunate  being,  who  (in 
consequence  of  a  volition  in  \tse\( purely  contingent)  has 
given  rise  to  the  existence  of  some  such  relative  notion 
in  the  minds  of  other  men,  would  be  an  inhumanity, 
equally  barbarous  and  unscientific. 

Or,  to  come  nearer  to  our  subject,  we  may  imagine 
some  such  speculative  senator  to  oppose  a  penal  enact- 
ment, on  the  ground  of  philosophical  fatalism,  averring 
that,  as  "all  things  are  as  they  must  be,"  human  respon- 
sibility is  a  fable,  virtue  and  vice  empty  names,  govern- 
ment and  law  the  trickery  of  kings,  as  religion  is  of 

*  Brown's  Lectures,  73  and  74,  psprcially  pp.  595  and  5S6,  vol.  iii. 
Brown  must  not,  however,  be  confounded  with  the  enemies  of  religion 
and  virtue.  But  his  preposlKruus  theory  of  morals  ailbrds  striking  illus- 
tration of  the  assertion,  That  iulelleciual  philosophy  is  yet  in  ifji  infancy. 


21 

priests.     But,  in  any  such  supposed  instance  of  learned 
quackery  or  philosophical  impertinence,  not  a  moment's    j^^.^, 
indulgence  would  be  granted,  in  a  senate,  to  the  man  of!  /  ^ -< 
theory:  all  ears  would  be  stopped,  or  his  voice  drowned 
in  outcries  of  contempt.     Nor  would  this  impatience 
spring  so  much  from  the  belief  that  the  argument  was  ^ 

s»phistical,  and  the  theory  baseless,  as  from  the  feeling  1 
that,  whether  true  or  false,  questions  of  this  order  belong  I 
not  to  senators^  but  to  philosophers.  Every  man  to  his 
business;  and  whenever  men  have  long  occupied  a  posi- 
tion where  extensive  experience  has  authenticated  cer- 
tain modes  of  procedure,  and  where  great,  many,  and 
substantial  benefits  have  been  obtained,  they  are  not  to 
be  thence  removed,  or  to  be  driven  from  their  ancient 
inheritance  of  known  advantages,  by  the  mere  demon- 
strations of  pretended  science.  If  an  abstruse  dogma 
be  indeed  well  founded,  it  will  in  time  vanquish  to  itself 
the  convictions  of  mankind,  and  will  then  properly  come 
in  to  regulate  the  conduct  of  life,  when  all  men  have 
confessed  its  right  to  do  so. 

But  there  is  a  bar  to  the  interference  of  abstruse 
dogmas  with  common  interests,  more  determinate  than 
the  preceding.     Let  fatalism  in  its  most  perfect  form  * 

*  ''Rea:ardez-y  de  pres,  el  vous  verrez  que  le  mot  lihorle  est  un  mot 
vide  de  sens;  qu'ii  n'y  a  point,  et  qu'i!  r,e  pcul  y  avoir  d'eires  libres. .  . 
.  .  .  Le  motif  r.cos  est  toujours  eje:ieur,  Granger  altaclie  oU  par  une 
nature,  ou  par  une  cause  quelconque,  qui  ii'est  pas  nous.  .  . .  JVlais  s'il  n'y 
a  point  de  liberie,  il  n'y  a  point  d'action  qui  merite  la  louaiige  ou  le  blanie; 

il  nhj  a  ni  vice,ni  vertu,  rien  dont  il  faille  recompenser  ou  clialier 11 

n'y  a  (\\vune  sorie  de  causes  a  proprement  parlerj  ce  sont  les  causes  phy- 
siques. II  n'y  a  qu'une  sorte  de  nccessile,  c'est  la  meme  pour  tous  les  etres." 
— Diderot,  asqnotedin  the  First  Dissertation  prejixed  to  the  Enctj.Biit. 
7th  edit.— If  indeed  there  be  neither  vice  nor  virlpe,  and  nothing  which 


be  assumed  as  the  mooted  question, — a  question  about 
to  be  peremptorily  decided.  Now,  on  the  supposition 
that  the  doctrine  is  disproved,  exploded,  and  for  ever 
cast  out  of  the  minds  of  men,  what  (except,  indeed, 
that  the  world  would  be  exorcised  of  a  demon  lie)  what 
is  the  practical  result?  Absolutely  none;  the  product 
of  the  controversy  in  that  case  is  just — zero.  Or  if  this 
nothing  must  indeed  be  attenuated  in  a  length  of  words, 
it  comes  to  this:  That  the  course  of  nature  is  what  it 
seems  to  be;  that  the  actions  of  men  are  what  they 
have  ever  been  thought;  that  the  common  sense  of 
mankind  is  in  truth,  as  it  has  always  been  supposed,  a 
reasonable  guide;  and  that  the  position  of  man  in  the 
present  state  is  not  "whimsical,"  "absurd,"  "contra- 
dictory," "preposterous,"  "frightful,"  but  altogether  ex- 
plicable and  consistent.  By  such  a  determination  of 
the  controversy,  all  things,  we  say,  would  be  left  as 
previously  they  were;  nothing  ahered,  nothing  amended, 
nothing  superadded.  Nor  is  it  as  in  those  branches  of 
science  where,  even  if  positive  and  practical  results  are 
not  obtained,  some  new  and  agreeable  objects  are  dis- 
covered, or  some  region  of  delightful  contemplation 
opened  to  the  mind,  or  certain  demonstrable  relations 
set  forth,  for  the  exercise  of  its.  powers  of  abstraction. 
Nothing  like  this  takes  place  when  fatalism  is  disproved; 

deserves  praise  or  blame,  it  is  certain,  not  merely  that  the  conduct  of 
mankind  throughout  one  large  department  of  its  ordinary  proceedings  is 
enormously  absurd,  but  also  that  the  constitution  of  human  nature  is 
founded  upon  error;  an  error  which  this  true,  and  onhj  true,  philosophy 
exposes.  Now  it  is  this  pretence  to  convict  the  sentiments,  conduct,  and 
constitution  of  mankind  of  illusiveness  and  absurdity,  which  affords  the 
ground  of  comparison  between  itself  and  every  other  science,  and  which 
convicts  itself  of  falseness. 


33 


and  therefore,  if  this  issue  be  anticipated,  the  entire 
controversy  may  as  well  be  at  once  dismissed  from  the 
precincts  of  common  life  and  of  ordinary  interests;  inas- 
much as  the  question,  when  thus  determined,  resolves 
itself  into  a  simple  nonentity. 

But  let  the  ahernative  be  taken,  and  let  it  be  sup- 
posed that  this  fatalism  is  so  convincingly  demonstrated, 
that  no  way  of  escape  from  the  dire  doctrine  can  at  all 
be  discovered;— then,  and  in  that  case,  its  practical  in- 
fluence might  be  rejected  as  completely  and  effectively 
as  if  it  had  been  disproved.  Fatalism  (by  the  supposi- 
tion) has  been  established  by  a  demonstrative,  or,  at 
least,  an  irrefragable  course  of  reasoning;  and  therefore 
takes  its  place  along  with  the  truths  of  other  exact 
sciences,  and  should  maintain  sociality  with  them; — at 
least  not  stand  alone,  repugnant  to  all,  and  frowned 
upon  by  all.  Yet,  as  it  will  appear,  this  must  be  the 
fact;  and  its  insulation  and  oppugnancy,will  be  as  great 
on  the  side  of  the  absolute  principles  of  mathematical 
science,  as  on  the  part  of  physical  and  experimental 
philosophy,  where  certainty  rises  not  so  high. 

To  prove  our  assertion,  we  say  that  a  presumption 
exists  that  the  material  world  is  so  constituted  as  to  fall 
in  with  the  prosperous  condition  of  the  moral  world;  or, 
in  other  words,  that  such  a  harmony  prevails  throughout 
the  system  of  nature,  material  and  intellectual,  as  shall 
make  it  invariably  true  ihat  each  discovery  of  the  actual 
constitution  of  the  one  shall,  directly  or  indirectly,  pro- 
mote the  well-being  of  the  other. 

We  say  a  presumption  of  this  kind  exists.  But  is  it 
supported  by  facts?     Does  the  general  suffrae^e  of  phi- 


34 


losophy — does  the  gross  result  of  mathematical  and 
physical  science — of  those  sciences  which,  resting  upon 
demonstration  or  conclusive  experiment,  are  not  to  be 
trifled  with — authenticate,  or  does  it  invalidate,  the  sup- 
position? Does  it  go  to  favor  the  belief  that  the  system 
of  nature  is  one  vast  contrariety,  inimical  to  man,  and 
far  better  unknown  than  explored?  or  does  it  corroborate 
our  theorem,  that  the  world,  having  been  put  together 
by  a  Beneficent  Power,  is  so  framed  as  to  adjust  itself 
to  the  comfort  and  welfare  of  man,  and  precisely  in 
proportion  as  its  laws  and  movements  are  understood 
by  him'?  *  The  answfer  need  not  be  formally  given, 
nor  the  evidence  in  detail  be  recounted.  Or  is  it  the 
fact  that,  though  his  ready  ingenuity  turns  to  his  partic- 
ular advantage  some  few  favorable  accidents  of  the 
material  world,  yet,  that  no  general  correspondence 
between  him  and  it  can  be  traced?  It  were  super- 
fluous to  affirm  that  the  reverse  is  the  truth,  and  that 
human  ingenuity  is  wholly  occupied  in  keeping  pace 
with  those  wealth-giving  instructions  which  philosophy 
every  day  hands  over  to  her  sister  arts.  Man  invariably 
receives,  as  well  from  the  surface  of  nature,  as  from  her 
depths,  articulate  invitations  to  employ  his  inventive 
faculty  for  extending  his  command  over  her  movements, 
and  always  for  his  own  benefit.  His  condition,  as  a 
reasoning  and  active  being,  in  this  system,  is  by  no 
means  to  be  likened  to  that  of  a  shipwrecked  crew, 
cast  upon  a  desolate  island,  who,  impelled  by  necessity, 
are  fain  to  convert  the  rudest  and  most  improper  and 
unfitting  fragments  of  things  to  the  purposes  of  art,  for 

*  See  note  F. 


35 


supplying  the  primary  wants  of  life;  and  who  (if  the 
phrase  may  be  excused)  exist  from  day  to  day  hy 
shifts.  But  rather  his  circumstances  in  the  abode  in 
which  Beneficence  has  placed  him,  might  be  resembled 
to  the  case  of  a  company  of  untaught  savages,  who, 
drifting  across  the  seas  in  their  canoe,  set  foot  on  a 
shore,  where  they  find  a  deserted  city  and  vacated 
palaces.  At  first  their  rude  ignorance  is  astounded  by 
the  various  works  and  products  of  mechanic  and  elegant 
art; — they  gaze  in  idle  amazement  upon  implements, 
machineries,  decorations,  and  luxurious  contrivances: 
and  they  misname  and  misuse  all  things.  But  after  a 
while,  the  dormant  faculty  of  reason  is  quickened  by 
observation:  tentatives  are  made,  and  every  day  is 
gladdened  by  a  new  discovery  of  the  end  and  intentroir 
of  this  or  the  other  article,  or  implement.  Every  ac- 
cession to  their  knowledge  turns  ou^  to  be  a  contribution 
to  their  comforts  or  advantages;  and  this  for  the  simple 
reason,  that  all  things  were  designed  and  constructed 
for  the  benefit  and  accommodation  of  just  such  beings 
as  these  are,  who  now  are  learning  the  use  of  them.  At 
length,  when  knowledge  has  reached  its  completion,  it 
is  confessed,  that  within  this  city  there  is  nothing  rude^ 
fortuitous^  or  chaotic;  but  that  all  bears  directly  or 
remotely  upon  the  welfare  of  those  who  have  become 
its  occupants. 

Such  is  the  tenor  of  the  evidence  given  by  the  de- 
monstrable and  physical  sciences,  in  support  of  the 
presumption  (now  no  longer  a  mere  presumption)  that 
man,  as  an  inventive  and  active  being,  is  placed  in  the 
centre  of  the  harmonies  of  the  material  universe;  so 


36 


that  it  shall  always,  and  by  the  very  necessity  of  nature, 
be  true,  that  knowledge  is  his  friend.  And  while  he 
learns  this  great  lesson,  he  derives  from  it  the  means  of 
detecting  the  mischiefs  and  fallacies  of  false  philosophy. 
Genuine  Science,  he  well  knows,  approaches  him 
always  as  a  kind  and  beneficent  instructress: — she  has 
ever  some  boon  in  her  hand: — she  aids  and  comforts 
her  pupil;  she  walks  on  with  him  in  the  path  of  im- 
provement; accelerates  his  pace;  stimulates  his  ener- 
gies; and  calls  him  still  on  and  on  towards  higher 
ground. 

But  let  it  for  a  moment  be  granted,  that  certain  met- 
aphysical doctrines  which  convict  the  common  sense 
and  moral  sentiments  of  mankind  of  absurdity,  and 
which  profess  to  abstain  from  urging  home  upon  the 
vulgar  their  practical  consequences,  only  by  a  gracious 
indulgence  towards  certain  useful  delusions,  and  neces- 
sary infatuations; — let  it,  we  say,  be  supposed,  that 
these  doctrines  are  established  by  abstract  reasoning  of 
the  most  peremptory  sort.  In  that  case,  the  human 
mind  would  be  placed  between  two  oppugnant  demon- 
strations. On  the  one  side  it  looks  upon  the  mathe- 
matical and  experimental  sciences,  which  are  all,  in 
their  thousand  forms,  of  a  friendly  and  auxiliary  char- 
acter— which  smile  upon  human  affairs  and  human 
activities.  And,  on  the  other  side,  it  sees  the  single 
gloomy  metaphysical  demonstration,  whose  first  saluta- 
tion, when  it  encounters  human  nature,  is — Fool  and 
slave!  which  instructs  only  to  baffle  and  to  astound, 
and  to  sicken  the  reasoning  faculty,  and  to  create  a 
contempt  of  man  and  of  the  universe.    And  it  is  found. 


37 


that  while  it  is  the  auspicious  property  of  natural  philos- 
ophy to  diffuse  itself  safely  and  kindly,  and,  like  a  foun- 
tain of  healing  water,  from  its  sources  in  colleges  and 
seats  of  learning,  to  flow  out  among  the  multitude,  as  a 
pure  blessing; — this  other  science,  this  abstract  demon- 
stration, is  (by  the  confession  of  those  who  darkly  di- 
vulge it)  a  dire  mystery,  an  esoteric  truth,  fit  only  for 
sages,  and  one  which  it  is  wise  to  hide  from  the  popu  - 
lace.  In  fact,  it  proves  itself,  when  it  comes  among 
the  vulgar,  to  be  susceptible  of  no  interpretation  that 
is  not  pernicious.  It  is  a  philosophy  which,  by  no  in- 
genuity, by  no  refinements,  can  safely  be. broken  up  into 
morsels  for  distribution  among  the  people."^ 

How,  then,  shall  a  choice  be  made  between  the  two 
demonstrated,  but  incompatible  philosophies?  How,  but 
by  an  indignant  rejection  of  the  dark  and  hostile  sci- 
ence, as  a  sophism,  even  though  to.  prove  it  such  were 
impossible?  This  doctrine,  we  say,  even  though  it  could 
not  be  disproved,  would  be  overwhelmed,  silenced,  and 
scouted,  by  the  concurrent  suffrages  of  all  other  sci- 
ences. It  is  contradicted, by  the  number  or  quantity  of 
proofs;  and  surpassed  in  the  quality  of  its  evidence:  it 
may  then  properly  be  driven  home  to  the  cavern  whence 
first  it  issued,  and  for  ever  forbidden  to  approach  the 
precincts  of  humanity,  or  to  infect  the  atmosphere  of 
knowledge,  action,  and  virtue.  In  a  word,  the  question 
of  necessity  may  be  pronounced  as  nothing  to  hu- 
man nature;  for  if  it  be  decided  in  the  manner  that 
is  favorable  to  ordinary  notions,  it  merges  in  a  void — 

*  See  note  G. 


♦ 


38 


disappears,  and  becomes  the  most  nugatory  and  idle  of 
all  learned  trifles.  But  if  determined  in  the  other  man- 
ner, then  it  assumes  an  aspect  which  places  it  in  contra- 
riety to  every  other  science — demonstrable  and  experi- 
mental; and  therefore  may  be  spurned  as  a  lie,  because 
it  speaks  as  an  enemy. 


SECTION     III. 

We  come  to  our  second  supposition — namely,  that 
the  question  of  liberty  and  necessity  is  important  to 
Theology  and  Christian  Doctrine. 

All  venerable  usages,  and  all  venerable  notions,  back- 
ed by  the  very  cordial  acquiescence  of  atheists  and 
infidels,  answer  in  the  affirmative;  and  agree  in  ac- 
knowledging that  the  controversy  involves  the  very  ex- 
istence of  religion.  But  does  common  sense  authenti- 
cate the  same  decision?  Does  the  analogy  of  the  real 
sciences  approve  it?*  Will  the  sounder  views  and  better 
feelings  of  a  future  and  happier  era  of  Christianity  con- 
sent to  it?  We  venture  to  give  the  negative  to  these 
interrogations^  and  are  bold,  moreover,  to  predict,  that 
the  very  next  race  of  divines,  our  own  sons  and  suc- 
cessors, will  reject  as  a  sheer  absurdity,  and  as  a  pre- 
posterous pedantry,  that  practice  and  opinion,  on  this 
subject,  which  has  stood  sanctioned  by  the  approval  of 
all  theologians,  and  all  philosophers,  of  all  ages! 

*  See  note  H. 


39 

The  history  of  the  connection  between  religion  and 
metaphysical  science  might  be  very  profitably  pursued.* 
But  volumes  would  not  suffice  for  the  theme.     The 
natural  history  of  that  fatal  alliance  might  be  set  forth 
within  much  narrower  limits;  and  would,  indeed,  re- 
solve itself  into  a  few  well-known  facts,  or  usages  of  the 
human  mind.     It  is  common  to  human  nature  (we  can- 
not here  stay  to  inquire  why)  to  throw  itself  off  from 
the  familiar  ground  of  proximate  and  intelligible  causes, 
and  to  seek  such  as  are  abstruse,  difficult,  and  ultimate, 
whenever  it  is   agitated  by   powerful  emotions.     We 
have  in  this  fact  one  of  the  sources  of  superstition;   and 
as  it  is  in  a  sense  true,  that  fear  is  the  mother  of  the  | 
gods,  so,  in  a  sense,  is  it  also  true  that  anxiety,  despond- 
ency, and  the  impatience  of  pain  and  sorrow,  are  teach-  »     ^  -  --    ^ 
ers  of  metaphysics.     It  may  be  doubted  whether  cer-  ' 
tain  profound  speculations  would  at  all  have  suggested  l^fi(y  fyt  ^ 
themselves  to  the  human  mind,  if  life  had  been  a  course  / 
of  equable  prosperity.     It  may  be  questioned,  whether  i      - 
the  inhabitants  of  worlds  unvisited  by  evil,  how  large  -^^  / / 
soever  their  intelligence  may  be,  have  thought  of  ask- 
ing. What  is  virtue? — or.  What  is  the  liberty  of  a  moral 
agent? 

The  conflicts  of  hope  and  fear  in  the  heart,  and  the 
assaults  that  are  made  upon  hope  by  the  scepticism  or 
mockery  of  those  around  us,   impel   us  naturally  (but        ^\- jlJ^ 
unwisely)  to  throw  up  the  good  and  proper  evidence         *        / 
which,  though  simple,  and  intelligible,  and  sufficient, 
does  not  open  to  the  mind  a  depth  profound  enough  to 


*  See  note  I. 


^< 


40 


give  room  for  the  mighty  tossings  of  the  soul  in  its  hour 
of  distress. — The  only  testimony  or  proof  that  is  strictly 
applicable  to  the  point  in  question,  is  thoughtlessly  re- 
jected; and  in  an  evil  moment  we  transgress  the  limits 
of  safety  and  of  comfort,  and  pass  from  the  <puTu:i  to 
the  juirot<pvcn}cA.  When  this  unhappy  error  has  been  com- 
mitted, two  courses  offer  themselves;  the  one  is  to  beat 
up  and  down  through  the  regions  of  night  whereupon 
we  have  entered,  until  we  find,  or  fancy  that  we  have 
found,  solid  footing,  and  discern  a  glimmering  of  light. 
The  other  course  is,  by  a  buoyant  effort  of  good  sense, 
to  spring  up  at  once  from  the  abyss,  and  effect  our  re- 
turn to  the  trodden  and  familiar  surface  of  things. 

The  pi-ocess  is  a  frequent  and  familiar  one,  which 
leads  the  mind  to  reason  on  important  occasions  in  a 
manner  which  it  shuns  as  absurd  in  parallel  instances  of 
a  trivial  sort.  The  man  who  loses  his  footing  in  the 
street,  and  besmears  a  new  suit  with  mud,  makes  mirth 
of  the  simple  accident.  But  if,  when  he  is  on  his  way 
to  accomplish  some  important  purpose,  to  make  a  for- 
tune, or  to  rescue  one,  he  falls  and  breaks  a  limb,  and, 
as  the  consequence,  irretrievably  forfeits  the  only  aus- 
picious moment  of  his  life,  he  then  looks  at  the  philoso- 
phy of  the  mishap;  and,  as  he  lies  on  his  couch,  medi- 
tates and  reasons — ^"of  Fate  and  Providence,*'  and  be- 
wilders his  best  convictions,  and,  in  the  gloominess  of 
his  sorrow,  persuades  himself  that  there  is  no  heavenly 
superintendence  of  human  affairs — that  chance  is  mis- 
tress of  the  world;  and  at  length  concludes,  that  fore- 
thought, prudence,  and  activity,  not  less  than  faith  and 
piety,  are   a   specious   folly.     He   resolves,  therefore. 


41 


henceforward  to  pursue  nothing  beyond  the  sensualities 
of  an  hour.  Nevertheless,  this  same  man,  whom  ca- 
lamity has  taught  to  be  a  metaphysician,  adheres  still,  on 
all  trivial  occasions,  to  the  maxims  of  vulgar  good  sense; 
his  philosophical  principles  he  takes  up  and  lays  down, 
according  to  the  magnitude  or  insignificance  of  the  bus- 
iness in  hand,  and  is  not  consistently  sage  or  simple 
through  the  course  of  a  single  hour.  To  avoid  the  des- 
tined track  of  a  bullet  that  is  whizzing  through  the  air, 
he  would  deem  a  folly;  and  yet  flinches  from  a  splash 
of  dirt!  But  should  he  not  remember,  that  the  very 
same  awful  fate  that  rules  the  flight  of  leaden  balls, 
presides,  not  less  arbitrarily,  over  the  whirling  of  straws, 
the  drifting  of  dust,  and  the  projectile  curves  of  mud? 

It  is  just  conceivable,  or  may  at  least  be  imagined, 
for  the  sake  of  an  illustration,  that  a  corporation,  col- 
lege, or  company,  possessed  by  charter  of  great  pre- 
rogatives, extensive  rights,  and  vast  weahh,  might,  if 
vehemently  urged  to  defend  its  monopoly  or  its  privilege 
against  the  envy  and  cupidity  of  the  community,  be 
seduced  so  far  from  the  path  of  common  sense,  as.  In- 
stead of  insisting  pertinaciously  upon  the  intelligible 
evidence  of  the  antiquity  and  genuineness  of  its  charter, 
and,  instead  of  establishing  the  fact  of  that  remote  trans- 
action, which  lawfully  invested  its  ancestors  or  prede- 
cessors with  these  disputed  rights,  to  join  issue  with  its 
opponents  on  some  such  physical  question,  as  that  of 
the  possible  perpetuity  of  material  substances,  like  paper 
or  parchment,  from  age  to  age;  or  on  that  of  the  actual 
existence  of  any  generations  of  men  antecedent  to  the 
present;  or  upon  that  of  the  abstract  communicableness 
H 


42 


of  rights  from  person  to  person.  Many  such  whimsical 
doubts  may  be  supposed  to  take  place  of  the  simple 
business-like  questions — Is  the  charter  valid? — Has  it 
been  truly  interpreted? — ^Is  it  lawfully  put  in  operation? 
Yet  "xiese,  it  is  manifest,  are  the  only  questions  in  which 
the  privileged  parties  have  any  peculiar  concern;  for 
those  higher  and  abstruse  difficulties  belong  not  in  any 
specific  manner  to  the  college  or  corporation,  but  are 
either  absolutely  Tutile,  or  must  be  held  to  supersede 
and  invalidate  the  whole  course  of  human  affairs.* 

An  instance  very  nearly  analogous  to  that  of  the  con- 
nection between  religion  and  metaphysical  science,  has, 
m  modern  times,  been  actually  obtruded  on  the  world. 
The  portentous  spectacle  has  been  exhibited  on  the 
theatre  of  nations,  of  a  people,  when  convulsed  by  polit- 
ical revolutions,  and  while  agitated  by  the  furious  pas- 
sions of  revenge,  pride,  and  rapacity,  and  while  eagerly 
contending  for  the  partition  of  rights  and  possessions,  to 
forget  the  urgent  considerations  of  national  prosperity 
and  public  safety,  and  to  plunge  headlong  into  the  abyss 
of  those  unfathomable  speculations  that  affect  the  very 
existence  of  man  as  a  social  being.  So  that  the  fren- 
zied multitude,  instead  of  asking — How  best  shall  we 
be  governed? — have  become  Infected  with  a  metaphysic 
madness,  which  has  rendered  them  incapable  of  reason- 
able submission  to  any  government,  excepting  that  of 
brute  force  and  terror. f 

*  See  note  K. 

t  The  American    revolution  involved  no    metaphysical  problems;  and 
it  produced  no  reign  of  terror,  nor  did  it  end  in  a  military  dictatorship. 


And  thus,  too,  it  has  happened,  that  the  i^^efitou^"^  ^  k 
interests  of  the  future  life,  as  set  forth  by  Christianity 
because  they  profoundly  move  the  soul,  and  because, 
by  their  interference  with  ungoverned  passions,  they 
excite  hostility,  lead  both  the  defenders  and  the  impugn- 
ers  of  a  documentary  religion  aside  from  the  only  per- 
tinent inquiry — Are  the  facts  duly  established,  accord- 
ing to  the  ordinary  maxims  of  testimony,  and  belief? — 
while  they  discuss  controversies,  to  which  religion  is 
related  only  in  common  with  the  most  familiar  move- 
ments of  social  life.  Let  philosophers  (or  sophists) 
deny,  if  they  please,  the  existence  of  a  material  world. 
Why  should  the  teachers  of  Christianity,  rather  than 
any  other  class  of  men,  rush  forward  to  oppose  the  pe- 
dantic vVhim?  If  that  denial  has  in  fact  any  meaning  at 
all,  or  if  it  carries  any  inference  which  men  ought  to 
listen  to,  then  should  lawyers  leave  their  cotirts,  as  well 
as  divines  their  pulpits,  and  merchants  their  markets, 
and  physicians  their  hospitals,  to  join  in  the  fray.  If 
any  persons  are  interested  in  this  abstruse  quarrel,  all 
are  so  alike — demonstrably  interested  in  one  and  the 
same  degree.  Or  let  philosophers  or  sophists  turn 
about  and  deny  the  existence,  not  of  the  material  world, 
but  of  the  intellectual  and  moral.*  All  men,  in  this 
instance,  as  well  as  in  the  other,  and  all  human  inter- 
ests, duties,  functions,  hopes,  and  fears,  are  either  alike 
concerned  in  the  refutation  of  the  learned  nonsense,  or 
may  alike,  in  their  several  circles  of  practical  activity, 
look  upon  it  with  utter  contempt.     Or  again,  let  philo- 

*  See  note  L. 


44 


sophers  affirm  that  an  unalterable  and  iron  fatality — an 

(*  immovable  sequency  of  cause  and  effect,  rules  the 
world.  If  there  be  any  practical  inference  whatever 
— any  inference  or  corollary  which  demands  respectful 
hearing,  appended  to  the  doctrine,  then  that  conse- 
quence hears  evenly  upon  all  activities,  upon  all  mo- 
tives, upon  all  reasons  of  conduct,  upon  all  calculations 
of  futurity;  and  should  either  be  allowed  to  arrest  the 
entire  machinery  of  human  life,  or  should  be  utterly 
forgotten  and  neglected,  whenever  men  are  called  to 
act  and  feel  as  rational  and  moral  beings. 
^.-We  deny,  then,  that  the  question  concerning  moral 
jtausation  is  one  belonging  to  religion  or  Christian  doc- 
/  trine;  because  Christianity — the  only  existing  religion — 
is,  in  the  mode  of  its  reaching  us — in  the  subject  mat- 
ter of  its  communication — in  the  motives  which  it  pre- 
sumes to  exist,  and  in  the  entire  apparatus  of  its  influence, 
part  and  parcel  with  the  common  material  of  human 
life;  and  is  no  more  dependent  upon  the  resolving  of 
any  metaphysical  problem,  than  are  the  most  vulgar  in- 
terests of  commerce,  or  political  institutions,  so  de- 
pendent.'^ 

It  enters  into  the  very  definition  of  metaphysical 
problems — that  they  are  universals.  To  bring  them, 
therefore,  down  upon  an  individual  instance,  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  other  instances  of  like  quality,  is  the  most 
enormous  of  all  possible  solecisms.  To  single  out 
Christianity  from  the  crowd  of  human  affairs  and  inter- 
ests, and  to  assail  it,  so  singled  out,  with  propositions 

*  See  note  M. 


45 


which,  by  their  very  essence,  are  equally,  true  of  all 
things,  or  false  of  all,  is  the  same  sort  of  proceeding,  as 
if  a  mathenmatician,  after  demonstrating  the  properties 
of  the  triangle,  were  to  apply  his  doctrine  only  to  such 
triangles  as  are  formed  by  the  rafters  and  joists  of  a 
roof. 

If  Christianity  asks  credit  on  any  principle  that  is- not 
recognised  by  the  customary  proceedings  of  mankind; 
or  if  it  demands  any  motives  or  course  of  conduct,  for 
justifying  which  we  must  appeal  to  abstruse  theorems; 
then  it  must,  of  course,  be  separated  from  the  fellow- 
ship of  human  affairs,  and  left  to  contend  as  it  can  with 
every  hostile  abstraction.  But,  if  none  of  these  things  can 
be  said,  is  it  not  most  preposterous  to  involve  it. at  all  with 
such  abstractions?  And  assuredly  it  need  not  be  impli- 
cated with  the  question  of  necessity;  for  this,  as  we 
have  already  said,  if  determined  in  07ie  manner,  is  a 
perfect  evaporation,  leaving  no  residuum:  or  if  deter- 
mined in  the  other,  even  though  by  a  seeming  demon- 
stration, ought  to  be  spurned  in  its  assault  upon  religion; 
first,  because  it  must  arrest  the  entire  movements  of  the 
moral  and  intellectual  world,  if  it  would  impede  any 
one  class  of  these  movements;  and  secondly,  because, 
if  it  does  so  interfere,  or  claims  a  right  to  disturb  an 
existing  and  salutary  order  of  actions  and  sentiments,  it 
stands  as  a  solitary  exception  among  the  sciences,  all  of 
which,  both  abstract  and  experimental,  are  found,  when 
brought  to  their  perfection,  and  when  purified  from  em- 
piricism, to  be  of  a  benign  character,  and  actually  come 
in  to  promote  and  facilitate  those  operations  which  the 
uninstructed  common  sense  or  the  instinctive  ingenuity 


46 


of  men  had  previously  set  in  movement.*  The  pro- 
bability, therefore,  that  this  pretended  demonstration  is 
a  mere  sophism,  favored  by  the  abstruseness  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  the  vagueness  of  its  signs,  is  as  a  thousand  to 
one — or  much  more  than  a  thousand.  The  teachers  of 
Christianity  should,  then,  barely  cast  upon  doctrines  of 
this  class  a  smile  of  contempt;  and  hold  on  their  way, 
as  men  whose  business  stands  upon  the  intelligible 
ground  of  facts  and  experiment. 

The  more  delicate,  but  not  more  obscure  question, 
now  meets  us,  whether  the  abstractions  of  pure  meta- 
physics can  at  all  avail,  or  ought  to  be  had  recourse  to, 
for  the  purpose  of  determining  those  controversies  which 
arise  among  Christians,  in  consequence  of  a  different 
interpretation  of  certain  portions  of  the  Document  of 
Faith. 

Whoever  should  undertake  to  answer  this  question 
in  the  negative,  might,  if  he  chose  to  argue  the  point 
by  an  appeal  to  facts,  find  abundant  materials  fitted  to 
his  purpose  in  the  whole  course  of  church  history,  com- 
mencing with  the  Platonic  fathers,  and  ending  with  the 
last  writers  on  both  sides  of  the  Calvinistic  controversy. 
Nothing,  we  say,  would  be  more  easy  than,  in  this  way, 
to  throw  immense  disgrace  upon  the  venerable  practice 
of  converting  Christianity  into  a  quibble  of  metaphysics. 

But  the  fruitlessness  and  inexpediency  of  this  method 
of  conducting  Biblical  controversy  might  be  forcibly 
argued  alone  from  the  instance  of  the  "Inquiry  con- 
cerning Freedom  of  Will."     Its  acknowledged  supe- 

*  See  note  N. 


47 

riority  to  any  theological   work  with  which  it  might 
properly  be  compared — a  superiority  confessed,  as  well 
by  philosophers  as  divines — and  its  exemption  from  the 
vulgar  sins  of  polemical  literature,  point  it  out  as  an 
instance  of  the  most  unexceptionable   sort.     Yet,  what 
has  been  the  result?     A  real  and  signal  service,  as  we 
have  already  granted,  has  been  rendered  by  it  to  the 
cause  of  important  truths;  but  the  service  has  accrued 
indirecdy:    while  it  has  utterly  failed  to  bring  the  con- 
troversy between  Calvinists  and  Arminians  to  a  satis- 
factory issue. — The  metaphysics  of   Edwards   demol- 
ished the  metaphysics  of   Whitby.     This   was  natural  j  *^^       V^ 
and   fit;  for  the  philosophy  of  Arminianism   could  no 
more  endure  a  rigid    analysis,  than  a  citadel  of  rooks 
could  maintain  its  integrity  against  a  volley  of  muske-  ^ 
try.     And,  moreover,  the  metaphysics  of  Edwards  im- 
posed a  degree  of  respect  upon  the  flippancy  of  philos-  V      /  .  x{  j  / 
ophers.     But   then  (not  again  to  insist  upon  the  fact,  ^^ 

that  the  "Inquiry"  has  become  almost  the  text  book 
of  infidelity)  it  has  not  in  any  sensible  degree  brought  J-       ^ 
home  the   abstract  argument  to  the  purely  theological 
difficulty.     It  has  left  things  where  they  were,  in  this '' f^c 
respect,  only  with  the  disadvantage  of  suggesting  a  tacit  L 

conviction — that,  what  Edwards  could   not  effect,  can 
never  he  effected.     The  apparently  incompatible  propo- 
sitions may  therefore  be  affirmed,  that,  while  our  author,     -JU^rv 
as  the  champion  of  Calvinism,  has  achieved  a  victory,  -,   ^j?     /'  if 
and  driven  his  antagonists  from  the  ground  they  had       "  --"^  "*^ 
unwisely  occupied;  he  has  confirmed  and  perpetuated, 6<;TwttS^; 
the  religious  difference,  by  the  mere  fact  of  having  failr  ^v,, 
ed  in  his  attempt  to  compose  it.     Is  it,  then,  at  all  to  be 


48 


desired  that  a  second  philosophic  Calvinist*  should  un- 
dertake the  task  of  leading  Arminians  on  the  path  of 
scientific  demonstration,  to  a  cordial  acquiescence  in  the 
plain  meaning  of  certain  portions  of  the  Scriptures?— 
We  think  not. 

Nevertheless,  it  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  im- 
probable event  that  pious  Calvinists  should  at  length 
meet  pious  Arminians  on  common  ground;  and  that  the 
difference  between  the  two  parties  should  for  ever  be 
merged  in  a  Biblical  doctrine. 

But  an  accordance  so  happy  will  assuredly  be  the 
result,  not  of  the  perfection  of  metaphysical  theology, 
but  of  a  better  understanding  of  the  special  nature  and 
unique  constitution  of  the  Document  of  Faith,  which, 
unlike  any  other  writing,  is  at  once  simply  the  work  of 
human  minds;  and  not  less  absolutely  the  work  of  the 
Divine  Mind.f  As  a  human  work — as  a  collection  of 
ancient  treatises,  letters,  and  histories,  composed  by 
almost  as  many  authors  as  there  are  separate  pieces,  it 
is  plainly  liable  to  all  the  ordinary  conditions  of  other 
ancient  literature;  and  not  merely  to  the  critical,  but  to 
the  logical  conditions  that  belong  to  the  products  of 
the  human  mind;  and  of  course  when  categorically  in- 
terrogated for  its  evidence,  in  relation  to  certain  abstract 
positions,  derived,  not  from  itself,  but  from  a  variable 
theological  science,  will  yield  not  a  few  apparent  con- 
trarieties. This  would  certainly  be  the  case,  even  were 
the  Bible  the  work  of  a  single  author. 

*  See  note  O.  t  See  note  P. 


49 

But  the  Bible  claims  no  respect  at  all  as  an  authority 
in  religion,  unless  it  be  received  as,  in  the  fullest  sense, 
a  Divine   work.     As   such,  it   must  have  iis  peculiar 
conditions;  and  these  (or  the  most  important  of  them) 
spring  from  the  fact,  that  the   Scriptures  contain  true 
information,  explicit  or  implied,  concerning  more  sys- 
tems of  things  than  one,  or  more  orders  of  causation 
than  one.     But  then  this  information  consists  just  of 
those  portions,  or  sections,  or  segments,  of  these  sev- 
eral systems,  or  of  these  series  of  causes,  which  con- 
tain practical  inferences,  important  to  the  special  process 
of  restoring  mankind  to  virtue.     It  will  follow  from  this 
description  of  the  heaven-descended  canon  of  religious 
truth,  that  the  harmony  of    the  various   portions  will  jn  ^ 
never  come  within  the  range  of  the  methods  of  human    ' 
science;  for  human  science  is  drawn  from  one  system  : 
only,  and  is  imperfect  and  vague,    even  in   relation  to  ' 
that  one  system.*  -  / 

Illustrations  are  always  faulty,  and  always  liable  to  be 
perverted;  yet  may  they  serve  a  good  purpose  when 
advanced  simply  as  such;  and  not  urged  as  proofs  or 
arguments.  Let  it  then  be  supposed  that,  to  a  number 
of  intelligent  persons,  instructed  in  nothing  beyond  the 
first  elements  of  mathematical  science,  there  were  to 
be  given — not  a  diagram  or  description,  but  some  of 
the  distinguishing,  and  some  of  the  most  recondite  prop- 
erties of  the  three  conic  sections — the  ellipsis,  the  par- 
abola, and  the  hyperbola;  and  that  it  were  demanded  of 
them,  not  only  to  find  curves  possessing  precisely  such 

*  See  note  Q. 


M^ 


^4.*-* 

s 


60 

properties,  but  to  find  one  regular  and  simple  figure 
which  should  contain  the  three  harmoniously  upon  its 
surface.  Now  it  must  be  granted,  as  hypothetically 
possible,  that  some  one  of  these  persons,  either  by  a 
happy  accident,  or  by  force  of  intelligence,  might  at 
length  produce  the  cone,  and  demonstrate  upon  it  the 
several  properties  of  the  theorem.  But  to  make  our 
illustration  complete,  it  should  be  supposed  that  no  such 
figure  as  a  cone  had  ever  actually  been  seen  or  thought 
of,  by  the  persons  to  whom  the  problem  is  given.  What 
then  would  be  the  probable  event? — May  we  not  assume 
it  as  likely,  that  each  individual,  attaching  himself  by 
preference  to  the  properties  of  some  one  of  the  three 
propounded  curves,  and  giving  his  attention  almost  ex- 
clusively to  its  peculiarities,  and  succeeding,  perhaps,  in 
the  attempt  to  reconcile  among  themselves  these  separ- 
ate conditions,  would  be  inclined  to  impugn,  as  neces- 
sarily  false,  the  processes  by  which  his  companions 
iU»  were  finding  the  other  two  curves;  and,  being  satisfied 
with  the  soundness  of  his  own  reasoning,  would  deem 
that  of  his  friends  absolutely  irreconcilable  with  it.  And 
U-  so  it  must  seem  inevitably,  until  the  one  true  harmonis- 

ing  figure  is  actually  produced. 

But  how  soon  might  a  fierce  controversy  arise  among 
the  perplexed  inquirers!  How  soon  would  there  take 
place  a  separation  of  the  partisans  of  the  ellipsis,  the 
parabola,  and  the  hyperbola!  The  friends  of  the  first 
of  the  curves  would  think  themselves  justified  in  de- 
nouncing the  hyperbolists  as  extravagant  heretics;  while 
these,  and  with  equal  reason,  would  hold  in  contempt 
the  timidity  of  the  ellipsists.     Meanwhile,  the  parabol- 


^^ 


51 


ist?,   much  admiring    their   own   moderation,   and  not 
doubting  that  it  was  they  who  alone  held   the   happy- 
middle  way  upon  which  truth  loves  to  walk,  and  hence 
believing  themselves  qualified  to  act  as  mediators  be- 
tween the  extreme  parties,  would  gravely  say  much  that 
was  very  plausible,  and  exceedingly  well  intended;   but 
would  not  in  fact  advance  even  a  single  step  toward  a 
true  conciliation  of  the  difference; — for  this  simple  rea- 
son— that  they  are  just  as  far  as  their  companions  from 
knowing  the  one  actual  principle  of  explanation. — The 
parabola  may  seem,  but  it  is  not  in  fact,  or  in   any  de- 
gree, a  reconciling  truth  between  the   ellipsis  and  the 
hyperbola,  for  the  ellipsis  and  the  hyperbola  are  not  at 
variance.     But  the  controversy,  though  it  tends  to  no 
satisfactory  issue,  is  producing  these  two  ill  consequen- 
ces (not  to  mention  the  excitement  of  bad  feelings  among 
friends,)  namely,  that  those  of  the  company  whose  tem- 
per was  the  most  calm  and  sceptical,  would  be  haunted 
by  troublesome  suspicions,  that  he  who  proposed  the 
problem   had   made  sport  of  the  ignorance  of  all,  by 
affirming  things  strictly  paradoxical.     And  then  the  by- 
standers would  almost  certainly  learn  to  treat  the  whole 
affair — the  problem,  its  propounder,  and  the  factions, 
with  utter  contempt.     But  we  suppose  that  at  this  in- 
stant the  propounder  enters,   and  forthwith  extinguishes 
the  feud  by  the  production  of  the  cone!  and  all  contra- 
rieties are  at  once  reconciled;  all    suspicions  are  dis- 
pelled; and  eager  dogmatists  of  all   creeds  are  put  to 
the  blush! 

To  defend  the  propriety  of  this  illustration  in  all  its 
parts  would  be  idle.     It  is  enough  if  it  explains  the  as- 


52 


sertion,  that  the  Scriptures,  because  true  and  divine, 
and  because  that  they  propound  separated  parts,  prop- 
erties, or  relations  of  systems  not  known,  will  for  ever 
baffle  the  attempt  to  reduce  their  testimony  within  the 
completeness  and  rotundity  of  a  human  science.  If  it 
be  so,  it  will  follow,  that  metaphysical  reasoning,  how 
rigid  and  exact  soever,  is  not  to  be  looked  to  as  the 
means  of  adjusting  Biblical  controversies.  That  it  may 
seem  for  a  while  to  do  so,  is  granted;  but  the  specious  con- 
ciliation will  either  be  a  mere  confounding  of  an  antag- 
onist by  force  of  logical  strength;  or  it  will  have  been 
effected  by  constraining  some  portions  of  the  scriptural 
evidence. 

We  conclude  that  the  question  of  liberty  and  neces- 
sity, or  of  moral  causation,  is  one  in  which  Christianity 
has  no  peculiar  interest,  and  from  the  determination  of 
which  it  can  neither  derive  permanent  advantage,  nor 
receive  lasting  damage. 


SECTION     IV. 

We  proceed  to  inquire  in  what  manner,  and  to  what 
extent,  the  question  of  liberty  and  necessity  belongs  to 
the  Physiology  of  the  Human  Mind. 

No  one  would  affirm,  or  indeed  could  consistently 
imagine,  that  either  the  idealism  of  Berkeley,  or  the 
non-causal  causation  of  Hume,  or  any  similar  doctrine, 
can  properly  occasion  even  the  smallest  difficulty  or  ob- 
struction to  the  chemist  who  is  discovering  the  affinities 


63 


of  acids  and  alkalies,  or  resolving  earths  into  their  ele- 
ments. Whether  or  not  there  be  an  external  world, 
and  whether  or  not  it  be  put  in  movement  by  efficient 
causes,  it  remains  true — that  heat  is  evolved  or  absorbed 
in  the  process  of  a  new  combination; — that  sulphuric 
acid  will  change  a  vegetable  blue  to  red; — and  that 
combustion  goes  on  more  rapidly  in  oxygen  gas  than  in 
common  air.  These  facts  may  be  mere  phenomena  of 
the  world  of  mind;*  or  real  events  in  the  world  of  mat- 
ter;— they  may  result  from  efficient  causes,  or  not  so, 
with  perfect  indifference  to  the  science  of  chemistry. 
And,  in  like  manner,  is  it  a  matter  of  absolute  indif- 
ference to  the  naturalist,  while  informing  himself  of  the 
internal  structure  of  animals,  or  of  their  dispositions, 
faculties,  and  habits,  in  what  way  the  systems  of  ideal- 
ists, of  materialists,  of  necessitarians,  or  of  sceptics,  are 
disposed  of.  The  stomach,  the  brains,  the  bone,  of  the 
dog,  the  horse,  and  the  camel,  will  continue  just  what 
they  are,  whether  or  not  those  animals  are  affirmed  to 
be  mere  intellectual  phantasms,  or  are  allowed  to  be 
actual  existences,  and  whether  or  not  causation  be  "an 
empty  illusion  of  the  fancy,"  or  a  connection  of  power 
between  successive  events.  And  not  less  independent 
of  these  speculative  doctrines  is  the  inquiry  (for  in- 
stance) concerning  the  internal  process  which  fills  up 
the  interval  of  time,  or  which  completes  the  connection 
between  an  impression  on  the  senses  of  an  animal,  and 
the  correspondent  movement  of  his  limbs.  If  it  be 
asked,  What  takes  place  within  the  cerebral  machine 

*  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge. 

*6 


64 


when  the  hawk,  from  his  motionless  point  in  the  sky, 
discerns  his  victim  in  the  grass,  and  descends  like  light- 
ning to  the  earth? — tliis  purely  'physical  inquiry  has  no 
more  connection  with  the  theories  of  metaphysicians, 
than  subsists  between  those  theories  and  any  chemical 
or  mechanical  fact. 

And,  manifestly,  the  conditions  of  physical  science 
are  not  altered  by  merely  turning  from  one  class  of  sen- 
tient beings  to  another; — from  the  lower  to  the  higher 
order  of  animals,  from  zoophytes  to  reptiles,  from  quad- 
rupeds to  man.  If,  for  example,  a  scientific  inquiry 
relates  to  the  anatomy  of  the  visual  organ;  or  to  the 
mental  processes  of  perception;  or  to  the  combinations 
of  impressions  from  two  or  more  of  the  senses;  or  to 
the  laws  and  conditions  of  volition;  or  to  the  influence 
of  animal  appetites,  or  moral  emotions;  or  to  the  oper- 
ation of  the  reasoning  faculty; — all  these  are  matters  of 
fact,  belonging  to  the  actual  conformation  of  this  or  of 
that  animal;  and  are  as  strictly  physical,  and  as  abso- 
lutely independent  of  metaphysical  dogmas  and  abstract 
truths,  as  are  the  affinities  of  acids,  and  the  crystalliza- 
tion of  salts.  There  would,  indeed,  never  have  been 
occasion,  even  so  much  as  to  affirm  this  independence 
of  physics  and  metaphysics,  were  it  not  that  the  imme- 
morial practice  of  confounding  the  science  of  the  human 
mind  with  pure  abstractions,  has  filled  both  departments 
of  intellectual  philosophy  with  absurdity;  and  has  de- 
tained both,  to  the  present  day,  in  a  state  of  infancy.* 

*  See  note  R. 


If  it  were  asked — Of  what  Is   the  dog  oJ^^^Horse'^'^    -**t  Jy. 
capable?  what  may  fairly  be  demanded  of  them'milie^    ■^"**  *^  ^-^ 
way  of  service?  or  of  what  improvement  may  their  na- 
tive faculties  be  susceptible  by  means  of  education,  by 
rewards,  punishments,   and  instructions?     These  inqui- 
ries, simply  physical  as  they  are,  must  be  resolved  by 
observation  and  experiment;  and  cannot,  even   in  the 
most  remote  manner,  be  affected  by  abstract  doctrines 
of  the  sort  that  constitutes  the   greater  part  of  what  is 
termed  the  "science  of  mind."     Whether  the  intelli- 
gence and  moral  sensibilities  of  a  certain  species  might 
be  wrought  upon  by  culture  to  a  greater  extent  than  has 
yet  been  attempted,  or  whether  it  has  already  reached 
its  limit  of  improvement,  is  a  question  upon  which  not 
a  single  ray  of  light  could  be  thrown,  even  by  the  most 
complete  solution  of  the  problems  which  fill  the   pages 
of  writers  on  intellectual  philosophy.     The  intellectual 
character  and  capacities  of  each  order  of  conscious  be- 
ings are  matters  of  fact;  as  much  so  as  the  fusibility  and 
malleability  of  a  metal. 

In  a  word,  any  sort  of  practical  question,  relating  to 
the  dispositions,  constitutional  motives,  or  proper  treat- 
ment, of  this  or  that  species  of  animals,  higher  or  lower, 
must  be  determined  in  the  methods  proper  to  physical 
science;  and  can  neither  be  illustrated  nor  interfered 
with  by  those  unchanging  truths  which  draw  not  their 
materials  from  the  world  as  it  is.  Thus,  we  not  only 
distinguish  the  two  sciences  of  physics  and  metaphys- 
ics; but  afBrm  their  absolute  independence  one  of  the 
other.  And  as  no  inference  drawn  from  the  former  can 
impugn  the  demonstrations  of  the  latter;  so  neither  can 


66 

these  demonstrations  reach,  or  modify,  the  actual  con- 
formation of  any  of  the  families  of  the  sentient  world: — 
spite  of  metaphysics,  lions,  bears,  antelopes,  and  men, 
will  go  on  to  feel  and  to  act  as  always  they  have  done. 
To  suppose  the  contrary,  were  the  same  absurdity  as  to 
imagine  that  salts  will  henceforward  crystallize  in  other 
angles  than  formerly,  when  it  shall  be  proved  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  efficient  causation. 

The  end  of  physical  science,  is  to  discover,  or  lay 
bare,  the  actual  constitution  of  its  subject; — not  to  ex- 
punge or  reject  any  of  the  facts  belonging  to  the  nature 
of  that  subject.  And  it  should  not  be  forgotten,  that  as, 
in  investigations  of  this  sort,  the  ultimate  facts  are  al- 
ready in  our  possession,  no  very  important  truth  can  be 
expected  to  result  from  even  the  most  complete  analysis 
of  the  phenomena.  Science  is  little  better  than  a  learn- 
ed amusement,  when  employed  in  analysing  a  mechan- 
ism, the  powers  of  which  are  already  familiarly  known, ' 
and  the  conformation  of  which  is  unalterable. — ^This  is 
very  much  the  disadvantage  of  the  entire  circle  of  in- 
tellectual philosophy. 

If  the  operation  cf  motives  in  the  human  mind,  or  if 

the  laws  of  human  agency,  be  the  subject  of  inquiry, 

our  business  is  to  explain,  if  we  can,  these  familiar  pro- 

\  f      cesses;  not  to  deny  any  of  their  conditions.     The  sci- 

'    (j{  *      ^^     ence  of  human  nature  ^n«?5  man  a  reasoning  animal, 

f  and  finds  him  master  of  his  welfare  (to  a  certain  ex- 

J^  f    >  lent,)  and  finds  him  a  moral  and  religious  being,  influ- 

^^^  \     ,.         enced  by  the  anticipation  of  future  events,  and  ruling 

^     ''^  his  conduct  by  a  reference  to  the  opinion  and  conduct 

of  other  beings.    These  facts  are  to  be  denuded,  if  it  be 


fc. 


67 


possible  to  denude  them;  but  assuredly  not  to  be  reject- 
ed or  overlooked.  We  may  describe  how  the  moral 
emotions  work;  but  not  affirm  that  there  are  no  such 
influences.  The  less  indulgence  should  be  granted  to 
the  audacity  of  speculation  in  the  region  of  mental  phi- 
losophy, because,  though  its  sophisms  may  dangerously 
pervert  the  common  sense  of  mankind,  its  truths  (ex- 
cept just  so  far  as  they  explode  such  sophisms)  have 
almost  nothing  to  offer  of  practical  instruction.  And  if 
this  be  true  of  the  science  in  general,  it  is  peculiarly  so 
of  that  branch  of  it  vi^hich  treats  of  the  process  of  voli- 
tion;— no  one  would  be  so  fantastic  as  to  expect  that 
even  the  most  complete  anatomy  of  the  voluntary  prin- 
ciple could,  in  its  inferences,  be  so  brought  in  contact 
with  the  minds  of  the  mass  of  mankind,  as  either  to 
lessen  the  violence  of  impetuous  passions,  or  to  enhance 
the  vigor  of  virtuous  emotions. — This  truly  is  not  the 
style  of  human  nature: — man  is  not  constituted  to  draw 
his  reasons  and  motives  from  the  theory  of  his  own  men- 
tal conformation:  and  if  we  would  imagine  an  extreme 
instance  of  intellectual  hypochondriasis,  it  must  be  the 
case  of  a  philosopher,  who,  whenever  he  proposed  to 
move,  speak,  or  act,  must  first  anxiously  consider  in 
what  order  to  pull  the  strings  of  the  intellectual  machine. 
We  grant,  indeed,  that  the  philosophy  of  the  agency 
of  sentient  and  voluntary  beings  is  a  matter  of  rational 
curiosity.  But  it  is  nothing  more;  and  of  far  less  con- 
sequence to  the  welfare  of  man,  than  would  be  the  dis- 
covery of  a  new  chemical  agent;  or  of  a  satellite  to  the 
planet  Mars:  for  the  one  might  facilitate  three  or  four 
of  the  mechanic  arts;  and  the  other  would  give  to  the 


58 

navigator  an  additional  celestial  chronometer.  But  a 
perfect  and  true  theory  of  volition  must  leave  volition 
precisely  what  always  it  has  been. 

Moreover,  physical  science  is  distinguished  from  ab- 
stract science,  both  mathematical  and  metaphysical,  in 
this  important  particular,  that  the  processes  of  the  latter 
are  entirely  dependent  upon  absolute  precision  in  the 
use  of  the  signs  or  terms  employed;*  so  that  the  small- 
est inaccuracy  disturbs  the  whole  series  of  deductions, 
and  falsifies  the  conclusion.  Hence  the  confessed  ob- 
scurity and  uncertainty  of  intellectual  philosophy,  arising 
from  the  vagueness  and  variableness  of  language — the 
only  signs  it  can  employ.  But  the  processes  and  results 
of  physical  science  are  happily  exempt  from  any  such 
disadvantage.  For  if  a  fact  in  the  conformation  of  an 
organised  body  be  ascertained — if  it  be  really  known 
to  the  discoverer,  it  may  be  expressed  or  described  in 
a  variety  of  modes;  and  may  be  spoken  of  in  a  copi- 
'  ■*         ousness  of  terms,  more  or  less  proper,  until  there  shall 

be  no  danger  of  mistake  on  the  part  of  the  reader.     It 
%- ft  follows  hence  (when  the  philosophy  of  human  nature 

f  ^  is  treated,  as  it  ought,  physically,  not  abstractedly)  that 

■  that  anxious  and  prudish  nicety  of  language  which  belongs 

to  metaphysical  discussions,  will  be  discarded  with  con- 
I  *    /       /^   tempt.     Whatever  pretended  fact  in  the  philosophy  of 
^^*^  mind  cannot  be  correctly  communicated,  except  in  one 

\Aj\x(f^^u  set  of  phrases,  may   safely  be  rejected  as  a   subtil ty, 
jrr     fi       /  ,  altogether  insignificant  to  physical  science.     The  mod- 


/fZ***^   em  chemical  nomenclature,  though  it  must  be  regarded 


'■''^  •  See  note  S. 


t^:-      \k.^    ^^'^. 


59 

BS  a  highly  important  instrument  for  facilitating  the  dif- 
fusion of  the  science,  and  for  giving  simplicity  and  pre- 
cision to  the  record  of  its  discoveries,  cannot  be  deemed 
an  inseparable  or  indispensable  means  of  making  them 
known.  The  same  facts  might  be  correctly  described 
in  any  colloquial  medium;  or  might  be  conveyed  to  the 
minds  of  a  people  destitute  of  the  erudition  which  makes 
our  Greek  and  Latin  terms  intelligible  to  the  English, 
French,  and  Germans.  The  same  is  true  of  physical 
facts  of  all  kinds;  but  not  of  metaphysical  truths,  which  y 
are  precisely — as  their  signs  are.  -^^0    CiA^*^ 

The  custom  of  considering  the  volitions  and  agency 
of  man  as  a  matter  of  abstract  science,  has  favored  the 
supposition,  that  volition  is  simple  or  uniform  in  its  mode 
of  springing  up  from  the  mind.     But  if  the  real  world  ^^^^i^^^^  4^ 
of  sentient  beings  is  looked  at,  it  will  at  once  be  seen,    '  iji^ 

both  that  each  species  has  its  peculiar  conditions  of  the  .   J 

voluntary  principle,  and  that  volition  in  each  species 
results,  at  different  times,  from  very  different  internal 
processes.  It  would  appear,  then,  to  be  the  natural 
course  to  look  out,  first,  for  the  simplest  instances  of 
volition;  and  then  to  ascend  from  them  to  such  as  are 
complex,  and  not  so  readily  analysed.  This  order  of 
investigation  directs  us  to  the  inferior  classes  of  the  ani- 
mal community;  it  being  probable  that,  in  narrowly  ob- 
serving instances  of  less  complicated  organisation,  we 
shall  become  insensibly  qualified  to  dissect  that  which 
is  more  so.  For  as  we  may  fairly  presume,  the  more 
complicated  orders  take  up  into  their  mental  machinery 
the  elements  that  have  been  singly  developed  in  the 
lower  ranks  of  existence.     It  is,  indeed,  alone  on  this 


^>fc*^i 


L./  -' 

i 


60 

presumption  th^t  we  can  avail  ourselves  at  all  of  the 
fruits  of  observation,  gathered  from  the  movements  and 
habits  of  inferior  species.     For  it  is  only  by  a  reference 
to  our  own  consciousness,  that  we  interpret  such  facts; 
and  this  interpretation  presupposes  the  homogeneity  of 
the  elements  of  sentient   existence.     If  a  pure  intelli- 
gence, or  simply  rational  essence,  wholly  destitute  of  all 
*"*«"    appetite,  emotion,  imagination,  were  to  descend  into  this 
i^'i'A^vf    %.0     world  of  hungry,  thirsty,  passionate,  irascible,  and  pleas- 
fj  J-     ,    ure-loving  beings,  it  would  find  itself  utterly  at  a  loss  in 
endeavoring   to  comprehend  the  movements  which  it 
I4.  witnessed.     That  is  to  say,  having  no  participation  of 

the   elements  of  the  animal  and  moral  nature,  it  would 
X^  want  the  glossary  of  mundane  life,  and  possess  no  means 
of  interpretation: — all  it  saw  would  be  a  riddle. 

But  this  is  not  the  case  when  man  looks  around  him 
upon  his  fellows  of  mferior  rank; — for,  possessing  as  he 
does  all  the  elements  of  animal  and  moral  life,  he  dis- 
cerns very  few  operations  which  he  does  not  at  once 
know  how  to  translate  into  the  language  of  his  own 
nature;  and  he  is  thus  qualified  to  philosophise,  as  well 
upon  the  mental  conformation  of  birds  and  quadrupeds, 
as  upon  that  of  his  own  tribe.  We  say,  he  witnesses 
very  few  operations  unintelligible  to  him;  for  there  are 
movements  carried  on,  especially  by  the  more  minute 
tribes,  and  those  that  are  the  most  remote  from  himself, 
which  nothing  in  his  own  nature  enables  him  to  under- 
stand:— they  are  facts  not  interpretable  by  conscious- 
ness, and  are  accordingly  designated  by  a  term  which 
has  no  other  significance  than  that  of  standing  for  a  class 
of  facts  not  understood.     Whatever  principle  of  agency 


61 


ia  the  animal  world  is  no  element  of  the  human  con- 
stitution, is  called  Instinct.*  These  inexplicable  facts, 
it  is  evident,  can  afford  us  no  aid  in  the  business  of  ana- 
lysing the  operations  of  the  human  mind;  and, are  there- 
fore to  be  excluded  from  the  process  of  induction. 

The  inferior  orders  of  conscious  beings  offer  to  our 
notice  two  or  three  distinguishable  elements  of  volition, 
together  with  the  rude  commencements  of  another,  for 
the  full  developement  of  which  we  must  look  to  the 
higher  nature  of  man. 

When  the  huffing  gusts  of  November  assail  the  em- 
browned forests,  it  is  the  amusement  of  an  idle  moment 
to  watch  the  course  of  a  single  leaf,  torn  from  a  topmost 
bough,  and  to  follow  its  flight,  hurried  by  eddies  of 
wind  into  the  fields  of  upper  air — there  to  perform  giddy 
circuits — the  sport  of  chance;  until,  borne  away  by  the 
general  current,  it  travels  west  or  east,  and  slowly  de- 
scends to  its  destined  resting-place  on  a  distant  spot- 
A  movement  not  altogether  unlike  that  of  the  severed 
leaf,  driven  of  the  winds,  is  displayed  by  the  wanton 
flight  of  the  swallow  on  a  tranquil  summer's  evening: 
and  if  the  atmosphere  were  not  seen  to  be  motionless, 
one  might  well  imagine  that  the  bird,  like  the  leaf,  was 
passively  yielding  to  every  fitful  blast.  But  let  the  lit- 
tle aeronaut  be  brought  to  the  earth,  and  his  structure 
examined;  and  it  will  become  manifest  that  his  move- 
ments have  sprung  from  other  than  external  impulses. 
We  first  notice  the  mechanical  apparatus  by  which  the 
living  machine  is  held  buoyant  in  the  air;  and  then,  by 

*  See  note  T. 

6 


62 


dissection,  follow  the  silvery  threads  which  connect  the 
merely  mechanical  parts — the  solid  frame-work — and 
the  contractile  fibres,  with  the  head;  whereon,  also,  are 
set  those  instruments  which  bring  the  animal  into  intelli- 
gent contact  with  distant  objects  around  it.  Here,  then, 
are  the  means  of  movement;  and  the  means,  also,  of 
keeping  this  movement  in  correspondence  with  place 
and  circumstance  of  the  external  world.  But  we  still 
have  to  seek  the  motive,  or  impulse  of  movement. 

Let,  then,  the  palpitating  bosom  be  reft,  and  we  shall 
find  the  gastric  sack,  with  its  solvent  juices  and  its 
peristaltic  action;  and  we  perceive  that  it  is  gorged  with 
insects,  in  every  progressive  stage  of  dissolution  and  of 
assimilation  to  the  solid  and  fluid  matter  of  the  animal. 
We  need  not  doubt,  then,  that  the  acrid  chemical  agent, 
which  is  accomplishing  this  conversion  of  the  substance 
of  one  animal  into  that  of  another,  acts  also,  when  not 
so  occupied,  in  some  such  way  upon  the  sack  itself  as 
to  excite  an  uneasiness,  which  being  conveyed  to  the 
centre  of  consciousness,  and  being  there  conjoined  with 
familiar  impressions  from  the  external  world,  and  meet- 
ing there,  also,  the  springs  of  muscular  irritability,  give 
impulse  to  the  machine  in  the  direction  towards  that 
external  object,  the  image  of  which  already  exists  in 
the  memory  conjoined  with  the  sensations  of  gratified 
appetite.  Now,  in  this  dissection  of  the  machine  of  an- 
imal life,  the  relation  of  parts,  and  their  interaction  for 
the  production  of  a  single  result,  are  perfectly  intelligi- 
ble;— as  much  so  as  is  the  mechanism  of  a  watch.  But 
in  the  construction  both  of  the  watch  and  of  the  bird, 
there  are  certain  uhimate  connections  which  lie  beyond 


obr  ken,  and  which  can  be  known  only  in  their  products. 
In  the  watch,  these  inscrutable  facts  are — the  principle 
of  elasticity  in  the  springs,  and  the  vis  inertice  of  the 
balance-wheel.  That  is  to  say,  the  two  last  causes  in 
the  machine  can  be  traced  no  further  than  to  a  certain 
expansive  property  of  steel,  and  to  the  universal  law  of 
momentum.  In  the  machinery  of  the  bird,  the  unknown 
or  ultimate  facts,  though  more  in  number,  are  not  in 
themselves  more  recondite  or  obscure;  but  just  as  much 
so—neither  more  nor  less.  They  are  such  as  these; 
the  chemical  power  of  the  several  fluids;  the  principle 
of  muscular  contraction;  the  principle  of  assimilation 
and  growth;  and  the  whole  cerebral  apparatus  of  sen- 
sation, and  the  interaction  of  sensations  from  without 
and  within,  producing  locomotion,  or  muscular  action. 
That  is  to  say,  as  in  the  watch,  so  in  the  bird,  the  ar- 
rangement of  parts  and  functions  is  intelligible,  but  the 
powers  are  unknown. 

And  yet,  notwithstanding  our  hopeless  ignorance,  in 
hoth  instances,  of  the  ultimate  connections,  we  may 
safely  and  certainly  reason  concerning  the  proximate 
and  intelligible  parts  of  the  contrivance;  and  may,  with- 
out being  supposed  to  understand  what  in  all  cases  lies 
beyond  human  knowledge,  affirm  that  we  comprehend 
the  mechanism  both  of  the  watch  and  of  the  bird.  The 
theory  of  the  regular  movement  of  wheels  and  indica- 
tors is  truly  given  when  all  the  parts  that  connect  the 
elasticity  of  the  two  springs  with  the  vis  inerticB  of  the 
balance-wheel  are  described.  And  in  like  manner,  the 
theory  of  action  in  the  animal  is  truly  given,  when  the 
fieveral  correspondences  between  the   stomach,  wings, 


64 


eyes,    ears,    and   brain   of   the    bird,    are    enumer- 
ated. 

But  this  one  account  of  the  movements  of  the  ani- 
mal machine  does  not  explain  all  the  facts  observable  in 
the  wanton  flight  of  a  swallow;  for,  beside  some  other 
movements,  which,  like  those  already  mentioned,  are 
easily  traced  home  to  certain  functions  or  organs,  as 
those  were  traced  to  the  stomach,  there  are  actions  not 
to  be  in  any  such  manner  explained.  It  by  no  means 
appears  that  the  litde  unlicensed  venator  invariably  di- 
rects his  flight  towards  the  nearest  or  the  best-fed  gnat 
at  any  moment  within  his  circle  of  vision;  nor  that  he 
is  diverted  from  the  pursuit  of  his  victim,  only  by  this 
or  that  assignable  object  of  alarm,  or  of  social  attrac- 
tion: his  aerial  gambols  are  too  various,  free,  and  erratic, 
to  be  all  assigned  to  impulses  of  this  order.  It  may  be 
well,  however,  to  turn  to  another  subject  in  search  of 
this  other  law  of  animal  agency. 

The  young  horse  that,  free  a-field,  makes  large  orbits 
over  the  level  mead,  is  neither  hunting  his  prey,  nor 
flying  before  an  enemy;  yet  does  he  put  forth  his  powers 
of  speed  as  if  death  were  behind  him,  or  life  before. 
He  stops  on  his  course;  snuffs  the  gale;  leaps  and  plun- 
ges; snorts,  and  again  darts  onward; — in  pursuit  of  noth- 
ing! Here  our  consciousness  (unless  octogenarians)  aids 
us  to  interpret  the  seemingly  causeless  activity.  To  the 
plenitude  of  muscular  power,  and  to  the  full  tide  of  ani- 
mal spirits,  belongs  an  appetite  asking  for  movement 
and  sport;  and  this  same  desire,  combined  with  other 
impulses,  or  taking  its  turn  with  them,  in  colts,  kittens, 
children,  and  boyish  adults,  is  the  cause  of  a  great  part 


65 


^f  all  the  hurry  and  the  change  which  keep  the  world 
from  stagnation. — But  again;  if  the  gay  activity  of  the 
young  horse  be  narrowly  observed,  a  belief  will  be  sug- 
gested that  his  course  from  side  to  side  of  his  pasture — 
his  capricious  pauses,  and  his  starts,  obey  yet  some 
other  internal  law.  He*  bites  the  grass  a  moment, — 
raises  his  head, — seems  to  ponder  some  freakish  device, 
and,  like  the  lightning,  springs  from  his  place,  and  is 
hardly  to  be  followed  by  the  eye.  May  it  not  be  sur- 
mised— and  if  the  manners  of  animals  of  all  classes 
are  watched,  must  it  not  be  believed,  that  within  the 
brain  of  the  animal,  (if  indeed  the  brain  be  the  seat  of 
consciousness)  as  well  as  within  the  brains  of  men,  an 
incessant  movement  is  going  on;*  or  a  stream  of  recol- 
lected sepsations,  fortuitously  connected  one  with  anoth- 
er, is  flowing  perpetually?  Then  these  recovered  emo- 
tions, or  sensations,  meeting,  each  moment,  either  with 
impressions  from  the  senses,  or  with  desires  from  the 
several  viscera  of  life,  form  infinitely  varied  combina- 
tions of  action.  Tt  is  as  if  this  under-current  of  thought 
had  been  included  in  the  mental  structure  of  the  animal 
for  the  very  purpose  of  breaking  up  that  uniform,  and 
mechanical,  and  calculable  succession  of  movements, 
which  must  needs  have  resulted  from  the  dull  influ- 
ence of  three  or  four  simply  reasonable  motives  of  ac- 
tion. By  the  means  of  this  exquisite  contrivance,  which 
diversifies,  indefinitely,  the  agency  of  the  animal — the 
animal  moves  over  a  far  larger  circle  of  activity — meets 
'with  a  thousand  times  more  new  occasions,  and  comes 

*  Sec  note  U. 

*6 


66 


in  contact  with  many  more  means  of  enjoyment,  than 
could  happen,  if  he  were  the  mere  creature  of  his 
appetites  and  desires. 

In  reference  to  these  primary  causes  of  action,  name- 
ly, the  desires  of  animal  life,  and  the  irascible,  amato- 
ry, and  cautionary  emotions  that  spring  from  them;  and 
the  love  of  muscular  action;  and  the  suggestions  of  the 
perpetual  current  of  thought;  it  is  to  be  noted,  that 
muscular  movement  takes  place,  in  the  strictest  sense, 
spontaneously;  or,  shall  we  say,  simultaneously  with  its 
cause?  The  cause  and  effect  are  not  divided  by  an 
interval  of  deliberation;  there  is  no  "determining  to 
determine,"  nor  "willing  to  will,"  nor  balancing  of 
reasons.  To  such  instances  the  metaphysical  analysis 
of  volition,  as  consisting  of  a  series  of  mental  opera- 
tions, is  utterly  inapplicable.  We  derive  the  notion  of 
stich  an  analysis  from  a  class  of  volitions  essentially  dif- 
fering from  animal  agency:  and  it  is  a  gross  violation  of 
the  rules  of  science  to  extend  it  to  cases  with  which  it 
has  no  affinity. 

But  the  lower  classes  of  the  sentient  system  offer 
also  to  our  observation  (in  its  ruder  forms,  at  least)  that 
compllex  order  of  Abolitions  which,  in  the  adult  and  cul- 
tured human  subject,  often  supersedes  those  of  a  simple 
and  elementary  kind.  Let  us  turn  from  the  young  horse 
a-field,  to  the  old  horse  in  the  stable;  and  we  shall  find, 
in  his  behavior,  many  instances  of  an  agency  which 
implies  a  mental  process  of  inference;  or,  tbe  connect- 
ing of  event  with  event,  and  the  deduction  of  a  motive 
therefrom:  or,  in  other  words,  ,we  shall  find  him  reason- 
ing to  a  certain  extent;  and  acting  in  a  manner  which 


OF  THE 


67  (UlJflVERSITY 


could  never  be  accounted  for  on  any  of  the 
already  mentioned.  The  hackney  who,  times  innumei 
able,  has  been  saddled  or  collared,  when  he  catches 
the  footstep  of  his  groom  approaching  the  stable,  awakes 
from  the  lethargy  in  which  perhaps  he  had  been  stand- 
ing in  front  of  his  rack:  and  if  this  lord  of  his  destinies 
appears  booted  and  spurred,  and  lays  a  hand  upon  the 
saddle  and  bridle,  the  provident  animal,  not  doubting 
that  he  is  to  be  led  from  his  stall,  to  which  he  may  not 
soon  return,  begins,  without  loss  of  time,  and  with  the 
utmost  possible  assiduity,  to  grind  and  swallow  as  large 
a  stock  of  the  material  before  him  as  his  powers  of  mas- 
tication and  deglutition  will  admit  of.  Now  we  must 
suppose,  in  this  instance,  a  mental  process  in  some  de- 
gree complex,  or  ratiocinative,  and  one  which  differs 
essentially  from  that  mere  association  of  memory  and  per- 
ception which  is  shewn  when  the  same  animal  swerves 
from  his  track,  and  turns  aside  toward  the  inn  where 
heretofore  he  has  been  stabled  and  fed. 

Yet  is  this  faculty  of  mental  combination  very  limited 
in  the  horse;  so  much  so,  that  (a  kw  extraordinary  in- 
stances excepted)*  he  scarcely  at  all  conforms  himself 
reasonably  to  the  new  occasions  that  arise  in  the  course 
of  the  service  he  renders  to  man.  Let  him  but  entan- 
gle his  fore  leg  in  the  strap  or  chain  of  his  head-stall, 
and  he  will  either  stand  so  shackled  until  he  is  lamed, 
or  will  plunge  and  kick  until  his  strength  is  spent;  al- 
though, if  he  were  capable  of  calmly  considering  the 
nature  of  his  embarrassment,  he  might,  by  the  simplest 

•  See  note  W. 


68 


movement,  get  himself  free  from  all  difficulty.  The 
horse,  therefore,  must  be  cared  for,  as  an  infant,  by  his 
master;  and  under  the  circumstances  of  the  artificial 
mode  of  life  which  he  leads  as  the  servant  of  man, 
thwarts  his  own  real  welfare  in  a  hundred  instances,  be- 
cause he  cannot  comprehend  that  connection  of  cause 
and  effect  on  which  it  depends.  He  cannot  compare^ 
or  simultaneously  entertain  different  ideas;  or  only  in 
a  very  low  degree. 

Neverthelessj  the  horse  possesses  enough  of  intellec- 
tual faculty  and  sentiment  to  be  dealt  with  advantage- 
ously, in  the  method  of  praise  and  blame,  of  punishment 
and  reward;*  and  he  actually  takes  rank  in  the  world 
of  moral  agents,  inasmuch  as  he  is  sensible  to  emotions 
of  shame  and  honor;  and  is  capable  also,  in  a  small  de- 
gree, of  governing  one  impulse  by  another.  A  horse 
may,  therefore,  be  managed  by  means  which  it  would 
be  utterly  absurd  to  address  to  a  hen,  a  goose,  a  pig,  or 
an  ass.  The  agency  of  one  class  of  animals  is  found 
to  differ  from  that  of  another,  by  all  the  amount  of  an 
additional  element.  And  it  would  be  highly  unphib- 
sophical  to  reason  concerning  the  two  as  if  they  were 
one  and  the  same.  And  here  the  reader  must  again 
be  reminded  that,  whether  or  not  we  are  able  to  push 
our  analysis  of  these  elements  as  far  as  we  might  desire, 
we  must  concede  the  fact  of  a  diversity  in  the  mental 
conformation  of  different  animals,  giving  to  one  species 
a  much  wider  range  of  action  than  is  occupied  by  anoth- 
er; and  the  reader,  while  he  grants  this  fact,  will  easily 

*  See  note  X. 


69 


•divine  the  application  that  may  be  made  of  it  to  the 
human  race. 

We  ascend  many  degrees  on  the  scale  of  reason,  of 
moral  sensibility,  and  of  complex  volition,  when  we 
turn  from  the  horse  to  the  dog.  This  intelligent  and 
sensitive  animal,  associated,  not  by  mere  accident,  with 
man,  but  made  for  his  companionship,  and  not  unwor- 
thily called  his  friend,  may  be  said  to  stand  as  an 
anomalous  instance  in  the  system  of  sentient  beings; 
inasmuch  as,  while  in  other  species  (perhaps  every 
other  species)  there  exists  a  manifest  correspondence, 
or  functional  equality ^^  between  the  mechanical  struc- 
ture of  the  animal  and  his  mental  capacity;  so  that  any 
supposed  addition  to  his  muscular  implements  would  be 
useless,  without  more  intelligence  than  he  actually  pos- 
sesses:— the  dog  has  more  mind  than  instruments  His 
power  of  reason  and  his  sensibility,  on  a  thousand  occa- 
sions, and  very  remarkably,  go  beyond  the  range  of  his 
mechanical  apparatus.  The  dog  is,  in  this  sense,  a 
needy  animal;  and  he  is  the  only  one  so  put  to  difficul- 
ty. He  could  effect  much  more  than  he  does,  both  for 
himself  and  his  master,  if  his  legs  and  paws  were  capa- 
ble of  a  greater  diversity  of  movements:  yet,  perhaps, 
we  ought  rather  to  consider  him  as  an  animal  over- 
rich  in  sense,  than  as  an  intelligence  poor  in  means. 

A  good  test  for  discovering  the  elements  of  the  men- 
tal conformation  of  any  order  of  beings,  is  afforded, 
first,  by  the  familiar  and  unquestionable  facts  of  the 
educational  treatment  which  common  experience  proves 
to  be  applicable  to  it;  and  then,  by  the  emotions  or  sen- 

*  See  note  Y. 


70 

timents  which  are  excited  in  our  minds  by  its  qualities* 
or  dispositions.  In  this  method  we  employ,  as  it  were, 
a  chemical  agent  for  bringing  to  light  a  concealed  in- 
gredient. The  dog  is  the  subject  of  abundantly  more 
education,  and  is  the  object  of  far  more  sentiment  than 
the  horse;  not  arbitrarily  or  accidentally  so;  but  be- 
cause he  possesses  more  intellectual  faculty,  and 
more  sensibility.  His  senses  are  eminently  acute; 
his  memory  is  retentive  and  exact;  his  f)assive 
power  of  acquiring  habits  is  great;  and,  to  complete 
his  mental  endowments,  he  is  able,  in  a  considerable 
degree,  to  hold  in  combination  more  than  two  or  three 
connected  ideas;  and  among  them  to  select  the  proper 
inference  from  the  antecedents.  Thus  qualified,  he 
remembers  his  master's  usages;  comprehends  his  mas- 
ter's operations;  and  acts  his  part  in  accomplishing  his 
master's  intentions.  Then,  as  a  moral  being,  he  is  sus- 
ceptible of  so  lively  and  pertinacious  an  attachment  to 
individuals;  he  has  so  much  sense  of  duty  and  of  honor; 
and  is  capable  of  so  intense  a  wretchedness  under  the 
sense  of  ill  conduct  and  merited  displeasure — that  he 
becomes  properly  the  object  of  correlative  sentiments 
of  aftection,  complacency,  or  displeasure,  in  the  human 
mind.  The  dog,  in  virtue  of  his  personal  character,  or 
his  individual  dispositions,  is,  apart  from  all  sophistica- 
tion or  extravagance,  regarded  with  feelings  which  it 
would  be  as  unreasonable  to  restrain,  when  so  called 
forth,  as  to  bestow  in  the  same  degree  upon  any  other 
species  of  domestic  animals. 

And  yet  the  dog  is  limited  in  his  range  of  mental 
faculty  and  of  sensibility;  and,  in  comparing  his  powers 


71 


with  those  of  man,  we  discern  the  more  clearly  the 
foundation  of  that  different  treatment  of  which  the  higher 
nature  is  the  subjectj — and  discern,  too,  the  ineffable 
absurdity  of  the  metaphysical  doctrine  which  assumes 
the  agency  of  men,  of  brutes,  and  of  machines,  to  be 
one  and  the  same  thing.  The  dog,  not  endowed  with 
that  inexplicable  faculty  which  prompts  the  beaver  to 
construct  for  himself  a  hut;  or  the  white  ant  to  erect 
a  cathedral  of  mud;  or  the  rook  to  weave  for  his 
family  an  aerial  tabernacle, — has  no  rational  power 
of  attaining  a  similar  result.  If  deprived  of  his  com- 
fortable kennel,  he  will  nestle  in  a  corner,  or  edge  him- 
self into  a  rick;  but  never  attempts  (though  loose  ma- 
terials of  all  sorts  are  lying  about)  to  construct  a  house. 
He  feels  that  a  wall,  or  fence,  or  stack,  gives  him  pro- 
tection from  rain  and  wind;  but  he  does  not  separate 
this  common  quality  of  the  wall,  fence,  or  stack,  from 
the  particulars  in  which  it  is  found;  or  think  of  it  ab- 
stractedly; and  therefore  does  not  conceive  of  it  as  re- 
siding in  a  new  combination  of  matter,  to  be  assembled 
by  himself.  Or,  to  exhibit  the  same  limitation  of  fac- 
culty  under  another  condition.  The  dog  may  learn 
to  take  a  penny  to  the  shop,  to  deposit  it  on  the  counter, 
and,  with  significant  gesture,  to  demand  his  roll.  But 
the  most  laborious  endeavors  would,  probably,  fail  to 
teach  him  the  equity  of  the  relation  between  two  pence 
and  two  rolls,  and  three  pence  and  three  rolls.  Nor, 
supposing  that  he  had  dropped  one  of  the  pieces  of 
money  on  the  way,  would  he  draw  for  himself  the  in- 
ference, that  he  must,  therefore,  content  himself  with 
one  roll  the  less.     And  yet  a  very  young  child  would 


72 


perceive  these  relations,  and  deduce  these  inferences; 
or  would,  at  least,  understand  them  instantaneously,  or 
as  by  a  flash  of  intelligence,  when  explained  to  him. 

The  want,  or,  at  least,  the  extreme  limitation  of  the 
power  of  abstraction,  and  of  comparison  of  complex 
relations,  affects,  in  an  essential  manner,  the  moral  con- 
stitution of  these  inferior  species;  even  of  the  most  in- 
telligent of  them.  And  the  possession  of  such  powers 
gives  to  man  his  responsibility,  invests  him  with  the  anx- 
ious prerogative  of  being  master  of  his  destinies;  and, 
in  a  word,  transfers  him  from  the  present  to  a  future 
system  of  retributive  treatment. 

But  we  must  advance  by  degrees  towards  our  con- 
clusion.    The  more  sensitive  species  of  animals,  espe- 
cially the  dog  and  the  elephant,  enter  within  the  pale  of 
the  moral  system,  or  stand  at  its  threshold  (just  as,  in 
virtue  of  their  sagacity,  they  enter  within  the  pale  of  the 
intellectual,)  by  their  susceptibility  of  elementary  emo- 
tions, which  place  them,  to  a  certain  extent,  in  commu- 
nication with  man,  and  render  them  the  objects,  individ- 
ually, of  his  moral   sensibilities.     And  the  parallelism 
between  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  difference  be- 
tween man  and  the  brute  holds  entire.     The  dog  and 
the  elephant  will  do  any  thing  that  comes  within  the 
range  of  association  of  ideas;  or  of  the  simplest  con- 
nections of  cause  and  effect; — but  not  more.     And,  in 
like  manner,  are  they  open  to  the  keenest  emotions  of 
gratitude,  shame,  revenge.     Yet  do  we  soon  touch  the 
boundary  of  their  moral  capacities.     The  elephant  has 
his  direct  emotions,   and  is  retentive  of  them;  but  he 
does  not  abstract  the  quality  which  has  so  strongly  af- 


73 


fected  him  from  the  act  or  person  to  which  it  belongs: 
— he  is  conscious  of  that  difference  in  temper  which 
distinguishes  one  of  his  keepers  from  another,  and  treats 
them  both  accordingly;  but  he  forms  no  separate  idea 
of  goodness  and  malignity;  much  less  compares  such 
abstracted  ideas  with  his  own  correlative  emotions;  and 
therefore  he  digests  no  complex  notion  of  virtue  and 
of  vice.  As  the  inevitable  consequence  of  this  defi- 
ciency of  faculty,  neither  the  dog  nor  the  elephant  cog- 
itates upon  Ms  own  dispositions,  or  personal  character; 
or  ever  institutes  a  mental  comparison  between  his  own 
behavior  or  habitual  temper,  and  any  such  notion  of  a 
moral  quality.  Therefore,  neither  dog  nor  elephant 
condemns  or  dislikes  himself;  much  less  conceives  the 
abstract  idea  of  a  better  disposition  as  an  object  of  de- 
sire: and,  therefore,  never  attempts  the  work  of  self- 
education,  by  repressing  ill  feelings,  and  favoring  the 
better. 

Accordingly,  a  self-originated  reformation  of  manners 
is  never  looked  for  from  the  brute.  He  may  Indeed 
be  amended  in  his  dispositions  by  external  treatment; 
— he  may  become  more  or  less  bland  or  tractable,  in 
consequence  of  changes  in  his  constitution  or  diet;  but 
he  never  changes  in  consequence  of  a  mental  process, 
bringing  two  abstract  qualities  into  comparison,  and  al- 
lowing the  one  to  be  chosen  and  followed,  while  the 
other  is  hated  and  avoided. — If  it  be  asked,  on  what 
ground  we  infer  these  deficiencies  of  internal  structure 
in  the  brute  mind;  we  reply,  that  the  internal  defect  may 
fairly  be  implied  from  the  absence  of  the  proper  out- 
ward results  of  the  supposed  faculty.  In  following^ 
7 


74 


J4 


even  the  most  sagacious  animal  through  his  movements 
in  connection  with  new  and  artificial  occasions,  we 
catch  him  at  fault,  precisely  for  the  want  of  the  power 
of  abstraction:  the  internal  structure,  though  recondite, 
is  as  good  as  laid  bare  in  such  instances;  and  we  cease, 
to  wonder,  that  a  being  so  deficient  should  not  provide 
for  his  welfare  by  artificial  means. 

And  the  very  same  deficiency  necessitates  his  moral 
condition;  and  (knowing  it)  though  we  feel  complacency 
or  displacency  towards  the  dog  or  the  elephant,  accord- 
ing to  his  dispositions,  we  neither  assign  to  him  the 
praise  of  virtue,  in  the  one  case,  nor  impute  to  him  the 
blame  of  vice,  in  the  other.  The  animal  that  does  not 
observe  proportions,  nor  use  instruments,  nor  construct 
machines,  does  not,  for  the  same  reason,  turn  or  re- 
model his  own  character; — does  not,  in  any  degree,  edu- 
cate himself.  Virtue,  vice,  praise,  blame,  law,  govern- 
ment, retribution,  are  proper  conditions  of  the  existence 
of  a  being  who,  by  his  use  of  arbitrary  signs,  by  his 
employment  of  complicated  means,  and,  by  his  conver- 
sions of  the  powers  of  nature  to  his  particular  advan- 
,tage,  makes  it  evident  that  he  possesses  a  faculty  which, 
in  connection  with  his  moral  sensibilities,  renders  vir- 
!  tue,  vice,  praise,  blame,  law,  government,  retribution, 
\  the  true  correlatives  of  his  nature. 

The  sophism  which  would  sever  virtue,  vice,  praise, 
blame,  law,  government,  retribution,  from  the  human 
nature,  contains  an  absurdity  of  precisely  the  same  de- 
gree as  must  belong  to  an  argument  that  would  attach 
these  conditions  to  the  brute.  It  were  a  whim  of  the 
same   order,   to   look   for   arts    and   accomplishment* 


75 

among  tigers,  kites,  sharks,  as  not  to  look  for  them 
among  men;  and  it  is  nonsense  of  the  same  magnitude, 
to  deny  that  the  being  who  builds,  plants,  writes,  and 
calculates,  cannot  work  upon  his  own  dispositions, 
or,  in  other  words,  is  not  blame-worthy;  as  to  affirm 
that  tigers,  kites,  and  sharks,  might,  if  they  so  pleas- 
ed, convert  their  natures,  and  become  more  amiable, 
and  less  rapacious,  than  hitherto  they  have  shewn  them- 
selves. While  instituting  a  physical  comparison  of  this  '/U-e*^ 
sort,  in  what  light,  we  may  ask,  appears  that  abstract  -■^- 

doctrine  which  would  measure  men  and  worms  by  the 
same  standard?  we  may  surely  say,  that,  though  affirm-  ^cci-~ 

ed  to  be  demonstrably  certain  as  an  abstraction,  it  is  a       jy^     Jj 
nullity  when  brought  into  contact  with  the  real  world.       ^ 
The  demonstrations   of   mathematical  science,   when       f^  ^  ^ 
applied  either  to  earth  or  heaven,  fit  all  things,  and  cor- 
respond to  all; — the  one  class  of  truths  works  glibly 
with  the  other;  and  we  confess,  with  an  emotion  of  de-^r^^^^^^' 
light,  the  presence  of  that  harmony,  which  is  the  test  ^C-c< 
of  universal  truth.*     But  when  metaphysical  abstrac-^ 
tions,  of  a  certain  order,   are  attempted  to   be  dove-" 
tailed  upon  the  actual  constitution  of  nature,  the  one     ; 
set  of  principles  calls  the  other  fool,  and  both  utterly    ' 
refuse  to  coalesce. 


SECTION    V. 


The  conjunction  of  the  higher  elements  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  being  with  the  common  ingredients  of 

*  See  note  Z. 


76 


animal  life,  is  beautifully  developed  to  the  eye  that, 
with  philosophical  attention,  observes  the  growth  and 
expansion  of  the  human  mind  from  infancy  to  man- 
hood. Nature,  in  preparing  to  bring  upon  the  theatre 
of  the  world  so  noble  an  agent  as  man,  steps  back, 
that  she  may  take  the  bolder  leap,  and  reach  a  higher 
stage.  Man,  throughout  the  period  of  his  infancy,  is, 
as  an  agent,  below  zero.  Though  launched  as  a  sep- 
arate being  in  the  world,  he  is  still  an  embryo,  and 
exists  only  within  the  coil  of  maternal  vigilance.  It 
cannot  be  doubted  that  the  perceptions  of  the  human 
infant  are  more  confused  and  illusory  than  those  of  the 
young  of  animals;  and  probably  amount  to  nothing 
more  (during  the  first  six  or  eight  weeks)  than  vague 
sensations,  conveying  no  knowledge  of  the  external 
world.  His  instincts  also  are  few,  and  less  determinate 
than  those  ol"  other  new-born  animals;  and  his  muscu- 
lar power,  far  from  being  commensurate  with  his  weight 
and  bulk,  is  a  mere  element  of  action,  which  remains 
yet  to  be  developed.  But  the  developement  of  this 
necessary  power  commences  at  once;  and  seems  to  be 
effected  by  the  constitution  of  an  immediate  and  inva- 
riable connection  between  the  muscular  excitability  and 
every  sensation  that  effects  the  conscious  principle, 
whether  arising  from  internal  organs,  or  from  impres- 
sions on  the  senses.  The  babe  is,  while  waking,  a 
machine  of  perpetual  movement,  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  trace  the  movement,  in 
each,  instance,  to  some  passing  sensation.  To  affirm 
that  such  actions  (if  so  they  may  be  termed)  have  in 
them  the  conditions  of  agency  as  described  by  meta- 


77 


physicians,  were  most  preposterous. — There  is  no  voli- 
tion, in  any  intelligible  sense  of  the  word;  nothing  but 
the  simple  fact  of  muscular  contraction,  as  an  immedi- 
ate sequence  upon  sensation.  This  primary  element 
of  agency  holds  a  continued,  but  diminishing,  force,  to 
the  latest  period,  and  when  other  elements  take  the  lead; 
and  it  maintains  the  animal  activity  in  a  way  that  might 
be  compared  to  the  use  of  a  fly-wheel  in  a  machine. 
Thus  at  once  are  the  muscles  brought  into  play,  exer- 
cised, and  strengthened,  and  taught  to  obey  instantane- 
ously the  mind.  The  strivings  of  the  arms  and  legs, 
the  turning  of  the  head,  the  cries,  the  smiles,  give  to 
the  little  scholar  his  lesson,  until  fatigue  prevails;  and 
all  the  forces  of  the  system  are  sent  in  upon  the  invol- 
untary muscles  and  the  secreting  organs.* 

The  distinction  commonly  made  between  v^oluntary 
and  involuntary  muscular  action,  is  clearly  founded 
uppn  a  real  difference.  But  when  this  physiological 
distinction  is  conjoined  with  the  metaphysical  descrip- 
tion of  volition,  as  a  mental  process,  consisting  of  suc- 
cessive parts,  it  gives  rise  to  a  false  supposition;  and 
suggests  the  belief  that  all  movements  not  involuntary, 
are  effects  of  rapidly  conducted  deliberations  and  de- 
terminations, are  orders  in  council.  That  complex 
process  which,  even  in  the  adult,  takes  place  only  on 
special  occasions,  when  antagonist  motives  are  in  con- 
flict— as  when  prudential  or  moral  considerations  are 
wrestling  with  desires,  is  assumed  as  the  model  at  large 
of  all  the  acts  of  the  mind.     But  if  we  fix   an  atten- 

*  See  note  A  A. 

*7 


78 


live  eye  upon  the  preparation  which  nature  is  making 
in  the  first  months  of  life  for  bringing  the  machine  into 
full  play,  we  shall  discern  no  evidence  whatever  of  any 
such  deliberative  operation;  and,  on  the  contrary,  shall 
be  led  to  think  that  the  main  business  of  infancy  is  the 
formation  and  cultivation  of  that  habit  of  the  animal 
system  which  places  its  movements  in  immediate  con- 
tact with  the  sensations  and  emotions  of  the  mind.  This 
habit  (to  the  formation  of  which  the  first  two  years  of 
life  are  allotted)  is  the  broad  foundation  of  agency, 
upon  which  is  slowly  to  be  reared  the  secondary  habits, 
which  may  at  length  become  principal  and  predom- 
inant. 

At  a  very  early  period  the  agency  of  the  infant  is 
enriched  and  extended  by  the  developement  of  the  two 
correlative  emotions,  which,  in  their  multiform  combi- 
nations, are  afterwards  to  constitute  the  moral  life. 
Nature  is  eminently  conservative  in  all  her  operations; 
and,  in  the  instance  of  the  human  infant,  is  seen  to 
make  timely  provision  for  its  safety  and  comfort,  in  a 
double  method.  As  soon  as  (indicated  by  the  intelli- 
gent movement  of  the  eye)  external  objects  are  dis- 
cerned as  such, — as  soon  as  the  perceptions  of  touch 
and  sight  are  well  combined,  and  persons  distinguished,. 
evidence  also  is  given  that  the  sensation  of  animal  en- 
joyment, and  the  elementary  delectations  of  the  senses 
of  sight  and  hearing,  pass  out — or  shall  we  say  cluster 
— around  that  familiar  object,  and  concomitant  of  all 
pleasure — the  mother;  and  awaken  an  emotion,  not  to 
be  analysed,  of  complacency,  which,  as  afterward  tu- 
tored and  informed,  assumes  the  name  of  love,  and  is 


79 


the  primary  constituent  of  the  moral  life.  It  need  not 
be  said  in  what  way  the  developement  of  this  emotion 
secures  the  wellbeing  of  the  infant,  so  far  as  its  well- 
being  depends  upon  maternal  vigilance. 

But  this  single  conservative  means  does  not  ade- 
quately meet  all  the  occasions  that  arise  in  this  world 
of  perils.  It  is  a  universal  truth,  affirmed  by  the  ele- 
gant Greek,  that  nature  has  given  weapons  to  all  her 
children; — 

^v<rt(  nf^itra,  tcuj^oi;,  &C. 

And  he  might  have  added — to  the  human  infant  smiles 
and  cries.  Not  merely  are  pains  and  uneasiness  in- 
stantly and  involuntarily  made  known  by  one  of  the 
most  awakening  and  disturbing  of  all  sounds,  but  an 
emotion  is  engendered  which  is  the  antagonist  of  the 
one  already  mentioned,  and  which,  like  that,  (though 
at  a  much  later  era)*  attaches  itself  to  particular  exter- 
nal objects;  and  when  so  attached,  is  called  resentment. 
This  feeling,  whatever  ill  consequences  may  result  from 
its  excess,  is  manifestly  a  conservative  element  of  life; 
and  actually  operates  to  secure  the  habitual  watchful- 
ness of  the  nurse  or  mother,  who  is  fain  to  prevent  or 
divert  its  excesses.  The  intelligent  mother  (or  which 
is  the  same  thing)  the  aifectionate  and  instinctively 
sage  mother,  uses  her  skill  incessantly,  as  manager  of 
the  two  elementary  and  antagonist  principles  of  the 
moral  life;  and,  by  avoiding,  as  far  as  possible,  to  excite 

*  See  note  B  B. 


80 


the  irascible  emotion,  and  by  giving  the  fullest  play  to 
the  loving  principle,  she  strengthens  the  latter  by  all 
the  force  of  habit,  and  deprives  the  former  of  the  cor- 
responding advantage.  Thus  the  ends  of  nature  are 
secured;  though  one  of  her  means  of  preservation  is 
superseded,  or  is  confined  within  the  narrowest  limits. 

That  developement  of  the  reasoning  faculty,  and  that 
power  of  complex  thought,  which  are  the  grounds  of 
intelligent  and  responsible  agency,  are  not  apparently 
developed,  even  in  the  lowest  degree,  until  some  time 
after  the  habits  both  of  the  animal  and  the  moral  life 
have  become  firmly  settled. 

Mobility,  elasticity,  promptitude,  as  the  conditions  of 
muscular  action,  and  the  custom  of  the  mental  opera- 
tions, get  the  start  of  the  deliberative  faculties;  and  so 
possess  themselves  by  usage  of  the  physical  and  intel- 
lectual being,  that  they  hold  through  life  their  priority; 
and,  whatever  power  reason  may  at  length  acquire,  man 
acts  ten  thousand  times  in  the  simple,  elementary,  or 
spontaneous  manner  which  he  learns  in  infancy,  for 
once  that  he  acts  in  the  manner  which  metaphysicians 
describe  when  they  analyse  the  process  of  volition.* 

It  is  not  until  the  power  of  locomotion  has  put  the 
little  pupil  of  nature  in  trust,  to  a  certain  extent,  with 
his  own  preservation,  and  when,  as  its  consequence,  he 
is  brought  hourly  into  new  circumstances,  that  the  first  un- 
questionable developement  of  reason  may  be  observed. 
By  this  time  usual  sequences  of  events  begin  to  fix 
themselves  connectively  in  the  memory,  and  give  birth 

*  Seo  note  C  C. 


81 


to  the  expectation  of  like  results  from  like  antecedents. 
Then  follows  (aided  by  the  imitative  principle,  to  a 
greater  extent  than  perhaps  we  imagine)  the  employ- 
ment of  means  for  the  attainment  of  an  end: — and  the 
occasions  which  give  exercise  to  this  incipient  work  of 
reason  are  presenting  themselves  every  moment.  About 
the  same  era,  the  growing  use  of  language,  and  espe- 
cially of  its  adjectives,  generates  and  favors  the  pro- 
cess of  abstraction;  and  the  sounds  good,  nice,  pleasant, 
sweet,  fine,  light,  dark,  white,  red,  green,  blue,  hard, 
soft,  high,  low,  Uc,  so  fix  themselves  in  the  memory 
in  connection  with  qualities,  as  to  admit  of  sejunction 
from  their  concretes;  and  are  all,  with  many  others, 
very  soon  actually  employed  by  the  tiny  metaphysician, 
in  a  manner  which  makes  it  unquestionable  that  the 
mental  machine  is  fast  getting  all  its  wheels,  one  after 
another,  into  movement.* 

It  would  be  curious  and  entertaining,  if  not  instruc- 
tive, to  trace,  by  a  series  of  exact  observations,  the 
influence  of  language  (and  other  signs)  in  eliciting  or 
hastening  that  last  expansion  of  the  mind,  which  im- 
parts to  it  a  deliberative  power;  or  which  constitutes 
man  a  voluntary  agent  in  the  higher  sense  of  the  term; 
and  which,  in  its  matured  state,  carries  him  to  an  im- 
measurable distance  beyond  the  inferior  species  of  sen- 
tient beings.  Daily,  hourly,  occasions  arise  in  that 
world  of  commencements — the  nursery,  whereon  the 
hasty  strides  of  desire  are  arrested  by  maternal  vigi- 
lance, and  other  motives  placed  before  the  mind;  and 

*  See  note  D  D. 


82 


antagonist  considerations  urged  upon  its  attention.  Here 
begins  the  process  of  complex  volition: — at  the  mo- 
ment of  its  commencement  the  being  sets  foot  upon  a 
course  that  has  no  limit,  is  translated  from  the  lower 
world  of  animal  life,  into  the  higher  sphere  of  rational 
and  moral  existence; — is  introduced  to  the  community 
of  responsible  agents;  and  takes  up  his  heirship  of  an 
interminable  destiny. 

Language  is  the  instrument  employed  in  awakening 
this  hitherto  dormant  faculty.  But  when  once  aroused, 
and  in  some  degree  strengthened  by  use,  the  law  of 
association,  (or  suggestion)  also  calls  it  into  exercise; 
and  continues  through  life  to  do  so;  except  in  instances 
in  which  such  associations  are  obliterated,  or  supersed- 
ed by  long  habits  of  vicious  indulgence.  The  condi- 
tion of  the  accustomed  sensualist  is,  in  the  view  of  sci- 
ence, a  true  infancy  of  the  mind.  Many  accidents, 
also,  bring  such  of  the  desires  as  ai-e  purely  sensual  or 
selfish  into  opposition,  rendering  the  gratification  of  the 
one  incompatible  with  that  of  the  other: — the  two  stand 
in  conflict  for  a  moment  or  more:  and  whether  the  final 
decision  be  better  or  worse,  the  mind  is  by  the  mere 
contestation  exercising  its  faculty  of  complex  thought; 
and  not  improbably  admits,  during  the  moments  of 
hesitation,  many  other  considerations  of  a  prudential 
or  moral  kind,  which,  even  if  they  do  not  prevail, 
enlarge  the  power  of  mental  comprehension  and 
comparison.* 

From  this  time  forward  (and  according  to  the  excel- 
lence or  deficiency  of  the  moral  education  he  receives,) 

*  See  note  E  E. 


83 


the  human  infant- acts  in  a  considerable  proportion  of 
instances  deliberatively.  As  a  consequence  of  this 
new  mode  of  agency,  the  association  or  suggestion  of 
ideas  becomes  so  modified  (especially  where  education 
does  its  work  efficiently,)  as  that  it  obeys,  to  a  great 
extent,  the  law  of  real  or  rational  connection,  in  the 
place  of  that  of  mere  juxta-position;  and  brings  for- 
ward, like  a  faithful  and  intelligent  minister,  those  con- 
siderations or  emotions  which  properly  belong  to  the 
immediate  occasion.  This  expansion  of  the  mind  makes 
itself  apparent,  though  somewhat  later,  by  the  devel- 
opement  of  the  inventive  faculty;  and  the  litde  mechan- 
ism, soon  after  the  time  when  he  has  taken  rank  among 
responsible  agents,  is  seen,  by  the  exercise  of  the  very 
same  faculties  of  abstraction  and  of  complex  thought, 
to  form  conceptions  of  an  end  or  design,  and  to  select, 
from  among  the  stores  of  suggestion,  the  fittest  means 
for  its  attainment.  These  nearly  simultaneous  pheno- 
mena deserve  especial  attention,  as  they  illustrate  each 
other;  and,  if  duly  considered  in  conjunction,  would 
dissipate  much  of  the  obscurity  which  metaphysical  sci- 
ence has  shed  over  the  physiology  of  man. 

We  should  here  notice  that  change  in  the  sentiments 
of  those  around  it,  which  insensibly  accompanies  the 
developement,  as  already  described,  of  the  infant  mind. 
Even  before  it  has  taken  place,  the  infant  has  made 
himself  the  object  of  fondness  and  complacency,  or  of 
displacency,  in  various  degrees,  according  to  his  per- 
manent dispositions  or  individual  character;  and,  before 
he  is  blamed  or  applauded,  is  loved,  more  or  less,  not 
only  with  a  love  of  general  benevolence,  and  not  only 


84 


with  the  instinctive  parental  yearning  of  the  heart;  but 
with  a  specific  feeling  which  (allowing  always  for  the 
susceptibility  of  the  subject  of  it)  is  related  to  the  qual- 
ities of  the  ohject  as  directly  and  infallibly,  as  the  mer-, 
cury  of  the  thermometer  is  related  to  the  temperature 
about  it.     It  is  of  no  avail  for  metaphysicians  to  de- 
monstrate that  such  correlative   feelings  are  unreasona- 
ble, unjust,  and  absurd:  the  physiologist  j^wc?5  them  an 
inseparable   and  universal  ingredient  of  human  nature; 
and  thinks  himself  entitled  to  presume  that  they  are 
founded  in  the  reason  of  things,  even  though  he  should 
not  be  able  to  demonstrate  so  much;  and,  at  all  events, 
he  clearly  discerns  that  these   involuntary  emotions  are 
the  great  conservative  principles  of  the  moral  world, 
and  could  not  be  obliterated  without  reducing  that  world 
to  horrible  confusion.     But  happily  there  is  no  danger 
of   any  such  prevalence  of  sophistical  philosophy  as 
should    unhinge  the  course  of    nature.     A  very  few 
minds  excepted,  and  these  already  diseased — it  will  re- 
main true,  that  gentleness,  meekness,  candor,  kindness, 
will  excite  affection;  while  irascibility,   sullenness,  ob- 
stinacy, and  malignant  acerbity,  will  as  certainly  draw 
towards  the  subject  of  them  dislike  and  repugnance. 

This  happens,  we  say,  hefore  the  era  of  the  unques- 
tionable developement  of  the  power  of  self-govern- 
ment, and  before  the  child  is  properly  deemed  praise- 
worthy or  blamable,  or  amenable  to  law.  But  after 
this  important  change  has  manifestly  taken  place,  a  cor- 
responding change  is  insensibly  effected  in  the  conduct 
and  sentiments  of  those  around  him. 


85 


In  the  first  place,  his  particular  actions  are  approved 
or  blamed,  on  the  tacit  principle  that,  now,  by  the  ex- 
pansion of  his  faculties,  it  has  become  the  law  of  his 
mental  operations,  that,  in  the  moment  of  action,  the 
several  antagonist  motives  that  should  influence  action, 
were,  with  more  or  less  distinctness,  presented  to  the 
mind,  in  consequence  of  previously  formed  associations. 
The  agent,  therefore,  is  deemed  to  have  made  his 
choice,  for  the  better  or  the  worse,  from  among  alter- 
natives; and  it  were  to  degrade  him  from  the  rank  to 
which  he  has  attained,  to  suppose  that,  like  the  inferior 
orders  of  the  animal  world,  he  did  but  obey  a  single 
impulse,  or  sensation. 

This  is  not  all: — the  agent  is  supposed  to  have  made 
his  choice,  for  the  better  or  the  worse,  in  this  particular 
instance,  according  to  his  habitual  dispositions;  and  the 
action  is  approved  or  blamed,  not  only  as  an  insulated 
fact,  but  as  an  indication  of  character.  And  then,  again, 
this  character  is  the  object,  not  only  of  complacency  or 
of  displacency,  but  of    approval  or  of  blame.     The 
character  is  approved  or  blamed  on  the  very  same 
tacit  principle  (differently  applied,  and  further  extend- 
ed) which  is  the  ground  of  the  approval  or  blame  of 
particular  actions,  namely,  that  the  now-expanded  fac- 
ulty of  the  agent  enables  him,  at  once,  to  form  abstract 
notions  of  moral  qualities — to   compare  such  notions 
with  the  sentiments  they  excite  in  his  own  mind,  and  in 
the  minds  of  others — to  institute  comparisons  between 
his  own  dispositions  and  the  dispositions  which  he  ad- 
mires or  condemns  In  others;  and,  finally,  to  make  his 
dispositions  the  subject  of  a  process  of  self-education. 
8 


86 


That  so  much  as  this  is  supposed,  and  is  presumed 
to  be  true,  by  mankind  generally,  and  is  established  by 
universal  experience,  is  shewn  by  the  threefold  treat- 
ment that  is  adopted  with  the  view  of  amending  the 
conduct  and  dispositions,  both  of  children  and  adults. 
First,  rewards  and  punishments  are  employed  for  in- 
suring right  determinations  in  particular  instances  of 
conduct.  This  is  done  on  the  strength  of  the  weD- 
known  fact,  that  the  law  of  association  will,  on  the  next 
occasion,  present  to  the  mind  of  the  agent  the  consid- 
eration of  good  or  ill  consequence  to  result  to  himself, 
as  the  fruit  of  his  behavior;  and  this  consideration  may 
actually  avail  (as  often  in  fact  it  does)  to  counteract  the 
most  vivid  selfish  desires.  Secondly,  it  is  usual  to 
attempt  to  amend  the  dispositions  and  the  character  by 
an  external  management  of  the  exciting  causes  of  the 
various  emotions,  and  passions,  and  appetites.  This 
management  constitutes  a  great  and  most  important  part 
of  the  business  of  education;  and  should  also  receive 
much  more  attention  than  hitherto  it  has  done,  from 
legislators,  and  public  instructors,  and  guardians  of  the 
people.* 

These  two  methods  are  applicable,  as  we  have  be- 
fore said,  in  an  inferior  degree,  even  to  animals — to  the 
horse,  the  dog,  the  elephant.  But  the  third  method 
of  treatment  is  exclusively  proper  to  human  nature; 
and  its  propriety  rests  upon  the  fact,  that  the  human 
mind  includes  an  element  of  action  not  g'ranted  to  the 
brute.     It  is,  we  say,  common  to  endeavor  to  awaken 

*  See  note  F  F. 


87 


In  the  mind  the  desire  of  amending  or  reforming  itself — 
that  is,  its  habits  and  settled  dispositions.  This  attempt 
differs  from  the  second  method,  or  the  management  of 
dispositions  by  external  means;  and  it  proceeds  upon 
the  known  and  familiar  fact,  that  an  introverted  effort 
of  the  mind  does  actually,  and  often,  and  under  a  great 
variety  of  circumstances,  take  place.  We  are  not  ob- 
liged to  shew  how  these  facts  consist  with  certain  me- 
taphysical princi))les,  or  with  certain  theological  doc- 
trines: it  is  enough  that  we  know  them  to  be  recorded, 
passim,  on  all  pages  of  the  history  of  man;  and  that 
they  belong  to  his  physiology.  By  all  means,  let  the 
mental  process  be  analysed,  if  it  be  possible  to  do  so: 
but,  if  not,  it  nevertheless  stands  among  things  known 
and  acknowledged  by  all  mankind.* 

It  is,  we  say,  known  to  be  the  usage  of  the  human 
mind,  to  make  its  own  acts  and  dispositions  the  subject 
of  its  meditations,  and  that  these  meditations  enkindle 
emotions  of  the  same  kind  with  those  excited  by  the 
view  of  similar  acts  and  dispositions  in  other  men — and 
that  to  these  generic  emotions  is  superadded  a  specific 
feeling,  more  intense  than  the  first,  and  which  borrows 
its  force  from  the  principle  of  self-love,  and  takes  its 
quality  from  that  of  the  contemplated  act  or  disposition, 
becoming  either  complacent  or  displacent:  in  the  latter 
case  bringing  with  it  emotions  of  shame,  fear,  and  re- 
morse. It  is,  moreover,  proper  to  the  human  mind  to 
conceive  abstractedly  of  a  mode  of  action,  or  a  style  of 
character,  better  than  its  own;  and  to  assume  that  con- 
ception as  a  permanent  object  of  desire.     In  conse- 

*  See  note  G  G. 


m 

quence  of  such  a  desire,  a  tendency  towards  it,  more 
or  less  strong  and  uniform,  takes  place.     In  this  man- 
ner, amendments,  reformations,  and  even  complete  rev- 
olutions of  character,  are  every  day  occurring  in  the 
human  system.     It  should  here  be  stated,  that  those 
deteriorations  of  character,  which  are  also  continually    u 
going  on  in  the  same  system,  do  not  come  about  by  a    i 
corresponding  process  of  the  mind,  or  as  the  result  of 
a  conception  of  vicious  qualities,  and  a  consequent  pur- 
suit of  themj  but  arise  simply  from  the'  unresisted  pro- 
gress of  sensual  or  malignant  passions,  which,  by  indul- 
gence, become  at  length  paramount  habits. 

If  it  were  demanded  to  analyse  more  strictly  the  first 
movements  of  this  mental  process  of  self-education,  it 
would  seem  the  most  auspicious  method  to  turn  from 
the  moral  operation,  which  has  been  enveloped  in  mys- 
tifications; and  to  examine  the  corresponding  intellec- 
tual operation,  wherein  the  mind  holds  to  a  certain  ab- 
stract quality,  pursues  it,  notwithstanding  a  thousand 
disturbing  causes,  through  a  long  and  intricate  series  of 
relations,  and  actually  attains  its  ultimate  conception.  It 
is  in  such  operations  that  the  human  mind  displays  its 
vast  superiority  to  the  most  sagacious  of  the  brute 
tribes,  and  proves  that  it  can  soar  with  a  steady  wing 
far  above  the  region  of  mere  animal  impulses,  of  acci- 
dental associations,  and  of  all  determining  causes,  ex- 
cept such  as  lead  it  toward  the  high  ground  of  unchang- 
ing Truth.  Now  this  intellectual  operation  runs  par- 
allel with  the  moral  operation  of  self-education;  and  the 
one  may  be  taken  to  illustrate  or  explain  the  other.* 

*  See  note  H  H. 


69 


Whether  this  distinguishing  faculty  which  divides 
.  man  from  his  fellow-sentient  beings  by  an  immense  in- 
terval, must  be  regarded  as  inscrutable — like  the  ulti- 
mate properties  of  matter;  or  whether  (as  is  probable) 
it  admits  of  being  separated  into  its  components,  is  not 
highly  important,  even  to  physiology;  and  is  scarcely, 
in  the  remotest  manner,  significant  to  morals  or  religion; 
since  the  fact  of  its  existence  is  familiarly  known;  and 
this  fact  is  enough  for  all  practical  purposes.  The  sim- 
ple and  intelligible  interests  of  ethics  and  theology  have 
no  more  connection  with  such  a  scientific  analysis,  than 
have  the  labors  of  the  mechanician  with  an  explanation 
(could  it  be  given)  of  the  law  of  gravity. 

It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  state  the  well-known 
fact,  that  this  power  of  introverted  action,  whrich,  by 
emphasis,  may  be  termed,  the  excellence  of  human  na- 
ture, is  liable  to  lie  absolutely  dormant,  for  want  of  ex- 
citement;— just  as  the  fellow-faculty  of  abstraction  also 
lies  dormant,  or  nearly  so,  among  barbarous  tribes;  and, 
moreover,  that  it  is  exposed  to  much  damage,  and  may 
at  length  be  quite  enfeebled,  by  a  course  of  vicious  in- 
dulgences. Man,  we  say,  may  either  lie  inert,  beneath 
the  level  of  his  proper  destiny;  or,  which  is  a  more 
melancholy  case,  he  may  fall  below  that  level;  he  may 
revert  to  the  moral  imbecility  of  infancy;  he  may  sink 
into  an  abyss,  where  he  grovels  hopelessly,  and  is  less 
estimable  than  the  brute;  nay,  must  be  content  to  share 
sentiments  of  loathing  with  the  hog,  or  the  hyaena.  Sad 
condition  this  of  necessity! — miserable  ruin  and  decay 
of  the  noblest  structure!* 

*  See  note  II. 

*8 


90 


It  should  also  be  remembered,  that,  apart  from  any 
theological  principles,  if  the  actual  condition  of  human 
nature  be  contemplated  purely  as  a  matter  of  physical 
science,  it  must  be  admitted  to  have  sustained,  from 
whatever  cause,  a  universal  damage,  or  shock;  inas- 
much as  its  higher  faculties  do  not,  like  the  faculties  of 
the  inferior  classes,  work  invariably,  or  work  auspicious- 
ly; but  are  often,  and  in  a  vast  proportion  of  instances, 
overborne,  defeated,  and  destroyed;  or  they  lie  abso- 
lutely dormant;  while,  in  no  instances,  do  they  take  that 
full,  free,  and  perfect  course,  which  is  abstractedly 
proper  to  them.  We  may,  if  we  please,  compare  this 
physical  fact  with  certain  principles  of  theology,  and 
may  derive  from  the  comparison  a  confirmation  of  our 
religious  belief.  But  this  is  a  matter  not  pertinent  to 
our  immediate  purpose. 

And  now,  if  we  must  indeed  bring  those  ill-chosen 
and  ill-fated  words,  liberty  and  necessity,  to  bear  upon 
the  physiology  of  the  sentient  world,  all  that  is  proper 
to  be  said  may  be  comprised  in  a  very  few  words.— It 
is  manifest,  then,  that  in  passing  on  from  mechanical 
and  chemical  to  animal  agencies,  we  are  not  passing 
from  infallible  to  fallible  sequences,  nor  from  causation 
to  contingency,  nor  from  necessity  to  liberty  (as  the  op- 
posite of  necessity.)  The  transition  is  of  altogether 
another  sort;  namely,  from  a  less  complex  system  of 
causation,  to  one  that  is  more  so.  But  the  one  system 
is  as  truly  causal  as  the  other,— or  else  neither  is 
at  all  so:  both  are  necessary,  or  neither  is  necessary; 
both  contingent  or  neither.  If  the  one  system  may  be 
foreknown,  so  may  the  other— or  neither: — if  there  be 


^A 


91 


any  fortuity  in  the  universe,  the  univers 
mass  of  fortuities.  Nevertheless,  the  distinctiol 
or  less  complex,  is  an  important  one.  The  course  of  a 
bullet  propelled  by  gunpowder  from  a  musket,  may 
readily,  and  with  great  precision,  be  calculated,  for  it 
is  determined  by  a  few  known  powers  and  laws.  And 
so  is  the  course  of  a  bullet  that  is  violently  shaken  in  a 
canist,er:  indeed,  in  this  instance,  there  is  a  power  or 
two  the  less  to  be  included  in  the  calculation.  But, 
who  would  attempt  to  forecast  the  thousand  successive 
reverberations  of  the  ball  from  the  sides  of  the  canister, 
even  though  it  were  agitated  in  the  most  exact  and  reg- 
ular manner;  much  less  if  it  were  shaken  by  the  hand? 
Yet  is  that  track,  though  not  to  be  calculated  by  human 
facuhies,  as  strictly  the  consequence  of  the  combined 
laws  of  impulse  and  gravitation,  as  is  the  course  of  a 
bullet  shot  from  a  gun;  and  if  the  one  may  be  calcu- 
lated by  human  intelligence,  the  other  might  also  be 
foreknown  by  super-human  faculties.  Every  one  is 
aware  that  the  application  of  the  word  chance  to  the 
.course  bf  the  ball  in  the  canister,  is  a  mere  colloquial 
imprropriety. 

The  complexity  of  -causes  is  vastly  increased  when 
we  turn  to  the  animal  world; — so  increased,  that  all 
human  calculation  is  utterly  set  at  defiance.  Even  if 
we  knew  all  the  external  circumstances  of  an  animal, 
at  a  given  moment,  and  all  his  sensations  of  a  physical 
kind,  we  could  not  know  the  succession  of  mental  states 
v^^hich  each  moment  combines  itself  with  the  passing 
impressions  and  desires:  nor,  if  we  did  know  this  also, 
could  we  calculate  those  combinations.     We  therefore 


92 


can  merely  forecast  probahiUties,  in  regard  to  the 
movements  of  animals;  but  can  never  set  a  foot  upon 
the  solid  ground  of  certainty.  A  calculation  of  causes 
so  many  and  so  intricate,  must  be  assigned  to  an  intel- 
ligence immensely  greater  than  that  of  man.  Every 
new  power  that  is  admitted  into  a  complex  machinery, 
tends,  of  course,  to  multiply  the  variations  of  its  move- 
ments; and  so  to  render  a  calculation  of  those  move- 
ments more  voluminous  or  difficult;  yet  not  to  render 
them  at  all  less  causal,  or  more  fortuitous. 

But  this  general  principle  is  open  to  an  important 
exception; — to  wit,  if  the  new  and  superadded  power 
be  of  a  paramount  or  commanding  sort,  it  will  simplify 
the  movements,  rather  than  complicate  them,  and  bring 
them  more  within  the  range  of  calculation:  instances 
may  easily  be  adduced  in  which  the  agencies  of  higher 
and  more  complex  natures  are  far  more  simple  and 
invariable  than  those  of  inferior  beings.  An  example 
or  two  will  illustrate  this  statement. — The  mental  ma- 
chinery of  the. adult  contains  more  movements,  is  more 
complex,  than  that  of  the  infant:  new  faculties  have 
come  into  play;  the  materials  of  intellectual  action  have 
been  vastly  augmented;  and  many  susceptibilities  have 
been  quickened,  which  are  dormant  or  non-existent  in  the 
infant.  But  the  mere  combination  of  internal  and  external 
impressions  renders  the  agency  of  the  infant  absolutely 
incalculable  (to  the  human  mind;)  whereas  the  agency 
of  the  adult,  though  open  to  a  hundred  times  more  in- 
fluences, is  often  simplified  by  the  predominance  of 
some  one  or  two  of  its  powers.  As,  for  instance,  a 
vehement  animal  desire,  or  a  ruling  mental  passion,  long 


93 


indulged,  sets  through  the  soul  like  an  impetuous  cur- 
rent, and  gives  a  high  degree  of  uniformity  to  the  con- 
duct.    Or   a  similar  uniformity  and  simplification  may 
result  from  the  predominance  of  virtuous  emotions.  Or, 
again — and  this  is  an  instance  of  the  most  significance 
— ^that  very  expansion  of  the  intellectual  faculties  which 
imparts  the  greatest  organic  complexity  to  the  machine, 
does,  at  the  same  time,  when  it  reaches  its  perfection, 
restore  (if  we  may  so  speak)  to  the  operations  of  the 
mind  the  most  absolute  simplicity.     Truth  is  one;  and 
it  is  the  glory  and  perfection  of  the  intellectual  nature 
to  perceive  that  oneness:  and  in  proportion  as  truth  is 
so  perceived,   and    embraced,   and    delighted    in,   the 
agency  of  the  being  will  become  more  simple,  and  cal- 
culable, and  will  lose  its  character  of  variableness.  The 
same  is  true  of  the  perfection  of  moral  faculties;  and  it 
may,  as  a  general  principle,  be  affirmed,  that  perfection 
in  all  orders,  and  of  all   kinds,  tends,  with  equal  steps, 
towards  simplicity,  uniformity,  and  constancy. 

And  yet  what,  it  may  be  asked,  is  gained  by  apply- 
ing to  this  simplicity  or  constancy,  which  is  the  char- 
acter of  perfection,  the  term  necessity?  There  is  a 
sense,  unquestionably,  in  which  it  may  be  so  applied; 
but  it  must  be  called  one  of  the  most  infelicitous,  and 
ill-omened  of  all  pedantic  perversions  so  to  do.  We 
gain,  it  is  true,  the  poetical  conception  of  an  awful,  in- 
visible goddess,  stern  in  feature,  inflexible  in  temper, 
and  implacably  despotic,  who  rules  the  universe,  and 
who  vouchsafes  no  other  reply  to  supplicants,  than  the 
monotonous  response — "Whatever  is,  must  be."  Apart 
from  this  poetry  of  metaphysics,  nothing  is  more  simple  ' 


'criB:-'''''y 


94 


than  the  certain  connection  between  perfect  intelligence, 
and  the  perception  of  a  truth  presented  to  it.  Who 
would  wish  to  be  endowed  with  a  freedom  from  this 
sort  of  necessity?  To  whom  is  this  kind  of  despotism 
galling,  or  intolerable?  To  none,  surely,  but  to  mad- 
men and  fools.  Nor  can  any  but  the  debauched  covet 
that  other  species  of  liberty  which  excuses  from  the 
moral  necessity  of  taking  always  the  road  of  virtue. 
To  be  bound  by  this  necessity  is  the  true  liberty;  and, 
in  fact,  as  we  approach  to  the  high  ground  of  intellec- 
tual and  moral  perfection,  liberty  and  necessity  merge 
in  one  and  the  same  condition;  and  he  is  the  most  nobly 
free,  whose  reason  and  whose  volitions  are  the  most 
invariable  and  uniform;  or,  to  use  an  improper  term, 
are  the  most  imperatively  necessary. 

Whoever  revolts  from   this   union,  and  would  court 
rather  a  mode  of  agency  as   far  removed    as  possible 

from   certainty,    and   from   calculable    sequency an  . 

agency  in  this  improper  sense  free,  should  look  for  it, 
not  in  the  heavens,  but  upon  earth,  and  among  the  most  \  ^ 
infirm  of  its  tribes.     He  should  put  off  the  man,  and  I  ^^ 
revert  to  infancy;  and  should  plunge  among  the  eddies  / 
of  ignorance  and  folly.     There  he  will  find  a  liberty  to 
follow  the  ten  thousand  paths  of  error,  instead  of  the 
one  path  of  truth;  and  there  he  may  surrender  himself 
to  a  course  so  capricious,  so   broken,  and  so  tortuous, 
that  his  wanderings  must  defy  the  power  of  any  intelli- 
gence short  of  the  Supreme,  to  calculate  their  termina- 
tions. 

Nothing,  one  would  think,  ought  to  be  wished  for  by 
any  order  of  beings,  but  that  its  mechanism  should  be 


W 


95 

so  constructed  as  to  secure  (in  the  ordinary  course  of 
things)  its  welfare.     It  is  by  such  a  well-ordered  con- 
struction of  parts  and  functions,  that  the  preservation 
and  reproduction  of  the  animal  tribes  are   actually  se- 
cured: their  machinery,  while  it  obeys  the  great  laws 
of  matter  and  mind,  accomplishes  the  beneficent  inten- 
tion of  the  Creator;  and  each  individual  enjoys  his  hour 
of  physical  good.     The  well-being   of  man  is  in  the 
same  manner  provided   for,  in    the  constitution  of  his  \cu^  fyT^ 
more  complex  nature;  and  so  long  as  all  the  parts  of  i 
this   constitution  perform   their  functions,  all   is    well. 
Damage  and  ruin  arise  from  the  inaction  or  decay  of 
some  of  the  parts.     The   actual  existence  of  this  dam- 
age is  precisely  that  point  of  physical  science  at  which 
it  is  intersected  by  theology,  and  where  the  former  must 
ask  light  and  aid  from  the  latter. 

For  a  moment,  let  it  be  inquired,  what  advantage  a 
sentient  and  intelligent  being  could  derive  from  an  abso- 
lute emancipation  from  causation,  or  from  the  certain 
sequency  of  effects?  The  very  notion  of  a  real  contin- 
gency, in  this  sense,  is  inadmissible  in  philosophy.  But 
let  it  be  granted  as  a  thing  conceivable.  Ought  not, 
then,  this  freedom  from  causation  to  be  termed  rather  a 
necessity  of  the  most  dire  and  formidable  sort?  and  he 
whose  prerogative  it  should  be,  would  become  an  ob- 
ject of  as  much  pity  as  the  wretch  who  lives  in  the 
g;rasp  and  keeping  of  a  madman.  This  power  or  pre- 
rogative of  contingency,  hy  the  hypothesis,  obeys  no 
motive;  adheres  to  no  connection  of  truth  with  truth;  is 
not  to  be  calculated  upon,  or  foreknown;  is  not  govern- 
ed by  relationship  to  any  actual  existence,  or  abstract 


96 

principle.  But  it  is  manifest  that,  to  an  intelligent  be- 
ing, whose  welfare  is  committed  to  himself,  and  who 
provides  for  that  welfare  hy  calculating  upon  the  known 
order  of  nature,  the  liability  to  contingency,  whether  in 
*^  the  external  or  internal  system,  must  be  a  pure  curse, 

y^'i  by  deranging  every  provision,  and  thwarting  every  pur- 

^  ^  pose.     A  liability  to  sudden  frenzy,  would  not  be  at  all 

more  fearful  than  the  liability  to  sudden  contingency.  V/ 
The  unhappy  being,  so  privileged  to  live  beyond  the 
circle  of  nature,  and  so  distinguished  as  an  oudaw  from 
ihe  orderly  system  of  causation,  would  be  justified  in 
making  for  himself  such  an  apology  as  this: — "When- 
ever, and  as  long  as  my  conduct  is  governed  by  reasons 
and  motives,  I  cheerfully  consent  to  be  treated  as  a 
responsible  agent;  and  am  willing  to  receive  the  due 
consequences  of  my  actions.  But  not  so  in  those  dark 
moments  when  the  fit  of  contingency  (my  fatal  glory) 
comes  upon  me: — then,  and  in  those  portentous  mo- 
ments, I  am  no  longer  master  of  my  course;  but  am 
-^  hurried  hither  and  thither,  by  a  power  in  the  last  degree 
J**^*-  (  a  >.  V  capricious,  whose  freakish  movements  neither  men  nor 
^  %^  angels,  nor  the  Omniscient  himself,  can  foresee.     Fain 

;^  (*.  would  I  surrender  this  fatal  freedom,  and  take  my  place 

i^  '•'  among  those  who  enjoy  the  benefits  of  the  laws  of  na- 

ture and  reason;  but  it  is  the  unalienable  condition  of 
my  existence  to  be  governed  by  a  power  more  stern 
and  inexorable  than  Fate  herself, — ^Alas!  Contingency 
is  mistress  of  my  destinies." 

If  it  be  no  excellence,  no  advantage,  to  be  liable  to 
contingency,  in  the  matter  of  volition,  it  may,  on  the 
Other  side,  be  asked,  if  intelligent  agents  are  deprived 


I. 


.<^  ♦'-»r3r 


97 


of  any  conceivable  advantage,  or  are  necessitated  in  the 
sense  of  confinement  or  restraint,  by  being  placed  in  a 
state  of  inseparable  connection  with  a  settled  order  of 
events  in  the  worlds  of  matter  and  mind? — The  reply 
of  common  sense  is,  that  this  connection  is  the  very 
ground  of  their  safety  and  happiness;  and  that  to  dis- 
solve it,  were  to  render  reason  useless,  and  ruin  inev- 
itable. And  if  common  sense  thus  responds  to  the 
question,  physical  science  corroborates  the  same  con- 
clusion, by  developing  in  detail  those  occult  corres- 
pondences between  the  structure  of  animals  and  the 
great  laws — mechanical  and  chemical — of  the  material 
world,  which  give  so  much  evidence  at  once  of  the 
wisdom  and  beneficence  of  the  Creator.* 

But  the  fatalist  (we  mean  the  philosophical  fatalist) 
and  his  opponent  also — the  advocate  of  contingent  free 
will,  concur  in  affirming  that  this  alleged  connection 
of  the  intellectual  and  moral  system  with  the  fixed  laws 
of  the  worlds  of  mind  and  matter,  actually  removes 
from  virtue  and  vice  all  their  substance,  and  renders 
these  terms  the  representatives  of  a  mere  illusion. 
"Where  there  is  causation,^^  says  the  philosophic  de- 
fender of  Arminian  theology,  "there  can  be  neither 
praise  nor  blame,  virtue  nor  vice. — But  virtue  and  vice 
must  be  affirmed,  and  therefore  human  volition  is  free 
from  causation." — "Where  there  is  causation"  says  the 
philosophic  fatalist,f  "there  is  neither  praise  nor  blame, 
neither  virtue  nor  vice.     But  there  is  causation  in  hu- 


*  See  not©  K  K. 

t  See  Diderot,  as  quoted  above,  p.  31. 

9 


98 

man  volitions;  and  therefore  virtue  and  vice  are  empty 
names." — Thus  reason  the  extreme  parties  in  this 
controversy. 

Now,  the  physiologist  might  well  content  himself 
with  spurning,  unrefuted,  the  premises  and  conclusions 
of  both  parties.  It  is  enough  for  him  that  he  finds, 
belonging  to  human  nature — human  nature  as  compared 
with  that  of  inferior  classes — certain  emotions,  and  modes 
of  feeling  and  acting,  which,  as  they  are  specific  and 
broadly  distinguished  from  all  others,  must  not  be  con- 
founded, or  lost  sight  of;  and  must  therefore  have  names 
,  to  themselves;  and  if  the  words  virtue,  goodness,  merit, 
&c.  are  taken  from  his  nomenclature,  he  must  instantly 
invent  new  terms  to  stand  in  their  places;  but  as  well 
retain  the  old  ones.  Moreover,  he  finds  that  the  quali- 
ties so  designated  subserve  the  most  important  and  in- 
dispensable purposes  in  the  constitution  of  the  human 
system;  and  he  would  therefore,  without  infringing  upon 
the  duties  of  either  moralist  or  theologian,  reject,  as  a 
^  /ruH^/  pestilent  sophism,  any  theory  which  should  tend  to 
L'  lessen  the  intensity  of  such  salutary  powers. 

*^  %  But  the  philosophical  fatalist  might  be  asked — If  vir- 

^^»■ye^^'^*^'  tue  and  vice  are  not  virtue  and  vice,  what  are  they? 
^/  7  /v^  ^'t  He  replies — ^^V'lrtue  is  good  fortune;  vice,  bad  fortune, ^^ 
We  will  then  apply  tliis  method  of  resolving  an  illusory 
notion  into  its  proper  nihility,  to  another  case  of  a  par- 
allel kind;  and  then  judge  of  its  soundness. — ^While 
intent  upon  another  object,  the  attention  of  Newton 
was  suddenly  attracted  by  a  phenomenon  which  led  him 
at  length  to  the  principle  of  the  different  refrangibility 
of  the  several  elements  of  light.   This  was  good  fortune; 


99 


but  he  laboriously  pursued  the  causal  suggestion,  and 
after  a  long  course  of  experiments  and  calculations, 
gave  to  the  world  the  true  science  of  optics.  And  this  J^^» 
ultimate  success,  also,  may  be  called  good  fortune. 
For  must  we  not  admit  the  original  vastness  of  his  un- 
derstanding to  have  been  good  fortune;  and  was  not 
that  mental  character,  or  intellectual  temper,  good  for- 
tune, which  made  the  attainment  of  scientific  truth  the 
paramount  desire  of  his  nature;  and  were  not  his  exter- 
nal advantages  of  leisure  and  education  also  good  for- 
tune? and  so  was  that  physical  wellbeing  which  allowed 
him  to  carry  on  his  researches,  until  they  reached  their 
happy  issue. 

Now,  if  the  philosophic  fatalist  means  no  more  by 
his  queer  use  of  the  term  good  fortune,  in  such  an 
instance,  than,  by  a  pious  conceit,  to  preach  us  a  lesson 
in  theology;  and  by  a  quirk  to  induce  us,  unawares,  to 
trace  "every  good  gift,  and  every  perfect  gift"  to  Him 
from  whom  all  excellence  descends,  we  can  make  no 
objection  to  his  intention;  but  must  protest  against  the 
method  he  adopts,  which  is  puerile,  affected,  and  cir- 
cuitous. 

But  the  sophist  in  question  would,  we  are  sure, 
indignantly  spurn  the  imputation  of  couching  a  religious 
meaning  under  his  quibble.  Does  he,  then,  intend  by 
it  to  hide  from  the  notice  of  mankind  all  those  mental 
qualities — all  that  intelligence  and  perspicacity,  and  that 
activity,  constancy,  fortitude,  and  consistency,  which 
intervened,  as  causes,  between  the  first  fortunate  hint, 
and  the  ultimate  establishment  of  the  theory  of  light 
and  colors?     By  applying  the  term  good  fortune,  both 


4^     Cjyf^iV^ 


100 

to  the  accidental  suggestion,  and  to  the  laborious  work- 
ings of  the  mind  upon  it,  does  he  wish  to  insinuate  that 
the  difference  between  the  one  and  the  other  is  a  mere 
nothing — a  shade,  which  should  be  disregarded?  In  this 
case  we  ask  why,  or  for  what  imaginable  purpose, 
should  we  so  confound  things  immensely  different,  and 
between  which  even  the  rudest  mind  discerns  an  infinite 
disparity?  We  beg  leave  of  the  sophist  to  adhere  to 
the  usages  of  common  sense,  and  shall  always,  in  future, 
as  heretofore,  call  intelligence  intelligence;  labor  labor; 
/f  ^  I    and  good  luck  good  luck. 

^^^t't*     '- ^  But  further;  if  it  were  really  conceivable  that  so 

^      1 '  whimsical  a  use  of  the  w^ord  good  fortune  should   gain 

f^  yVt'&M^f  ^general  credit,    so  as  at  length  to  dismiss  from  the 
/^'  recollections  of  men  the  difference  between  mere  luck, 

or  the   accidental  possession  of  an  advantage,  and  the 
Ji^-*^  attainment  of  advantages  by  labor,  skill,  and  perseve- 

ttjjb^     ranee;  then  it  would  immediately  operate  (and  especially 
upon  inferior  minds)  not  merely  to  confound  things  dis- 
tinguishable,  but  to  destroy  the  very  qualities  that  are 
3l  fJi  ^^®  objects  of  the  distinction.     The  sophism,  we  say, 

if  really  assented   to,  would  debilitate  those   motives 
^       ^«^^i>    which  are  the  springs  of  action,   and  would  lead  man- 
^^ — "'        kind  back  from  the  state  of  civilisation  wherein  many 
(^U^—^      more  advantages  are  received  from  labor  than  from 
'/        luck,  to  the  savage   state;    wherein  the    few  advan- 
V^t.ji^'^-  tages  that  are  actually  enjoyed  spring  more  from  luck 

,    ^  ;'    than   from   labor.      But  can   any   such   retrogressive 
^"^'"^  movement  be  the  work  of  true  philosophy?     Far  from 

/,  itl  It  is  philosophy  that  has  led  mankind  forward  from  the 

u     l^f^       savage  to  the  civilised  condition;  and  whatever  would  ar- 
^^^U;fe  rest  him  in  his  course,  or  beat  him  back,  is  not  philosophy. 


>.w  ^ 


ItcJ^  t^'   f^^f-ffv^^^V*^^ 


.J  ^ 


101 

If,  then,  it  be  a  pedantic  whim,  and  a  whim  of  mis- 
chievous tendency,  to  apply  both  to  an  accidental  benefit, 
and  to  a  benefit  acquired  afi;er  long  and  laborious  efforts, 
the  same  term — good  fortune;  it  is  also  a  pedantic  and 
a  mischievous  whim  to  call  virtue  good  fortune;  for  vir- 
tue is  not  an  accidental  boon,  thrown  in  a  man's  path, 
and  with  which  he  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  pick  it  up: 
— 'it  is  the  result  of  a  long-continued  and  laborious  pro- 
cess, wherein  the  mind  works  upon  and  among  its  emo-  )l 
tions,  its  desires,  and  its  propensities.     But,   then,  the    <^yvwi  . 
pedantry  in  this  case  carries  with  it  a  real  and  effica-        ^,/        p^ 
cious  power  of  mischief;  inasmuch  as  the  difficulty  of      '  "  ■ 
attaining  virtue  consists,  greatly,  in  that  very  laxity  of 
spirit  which  the  sophism  tends  to  increase;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  cherishes,  favors,   and   enhances  those 
specific  illusions  which  hover  around  all  vicious  habits 
of  the  mind. — Vice,  of  every  kind,  is,  to  the  spirit,  an 
inebriety,  having  both  its  season  of  delirium,   and  its 
season  of  lethargy.     Now,  if  the  vicious  subject  he) 
taught  that  his  sensuality  and  his  crimes  are   simply  ill 
fortune,  his  delirium  will  be  heightened  by  desperation; 
and  his  lethargy  deepened  by  the  removal  of  all  sense 
of  remorse. 

This   doctrine,   then,    of  the   philosophical   fatalist^,      •:, 
which,  if  applied  to  the  intellect,  would  lead  mankindV     ^Jx 
to  barbarism;  does,  by  a  parallel  process,  when  applied!      J  '^ 
to  the  conscience,  lead  him  into  the  abyss  of  brutal  \ 
debauchery  and  of  ferocity.     Shall  we  then  admit,  or 
shall  we  discard  it? 
*9 


fr 


u-t- 


102 


SECTION    VI. 


It  now  only  remains — and  this  part  of  our  task  may- 
soon  be  dismissed — to  consider  the  question  of  liberty 
and  necessity,  as  belonging  to  metaphysical  science. 

There  lies  before  us  a  long  series,  or  chain  of  prolate 
spheroids,  linked  together  by  a  copula,  and  marked  ia 
pairs, — a,  h;  a,  b,  k,c.  Now,  a  philosopher  of  a  cer- 
tain school  comes  up,  and  lectures  upon  the  series  in 
the  following  manner: — 

"You  have  always  seen  these  spheriods  arranged  in 
this  precise  order;  and  your  mind  has  acquired,  as  a 
habit,  the  belief  (a  pardonable  prejudice)  that  they  are 
inseparably  or  necessarily  connected  in  this  order,  and 
could  exist  in  no  other.  And  in  consequence  of  this 
habit,  you  have  arbitrarily  lettered  them  in  pairs  a,  b, 
&c.,  and  furthermore  have  called  ct,  cause,  and  b,  ef- 
fect: and  then  have  formed  to  yourself  a  certain  ground- 
less and  inexplicable  notion,  to  which  you  give  the  name 
power;  and  you  say  that  a  has  a  power  to  produce  b, 
and  so  on.  But  all  this  is  a  tissue  of  illusions.  You 
really  know  nothing  beyond  the  fact  of  the  actual  con- 
junction, or  juxta-position,  or  uniform  .  sequency  of  •« 
and  b;  and  your  word  power  stands  for  nothing  but  an 
abstraction,  that  has  grown,  we  hardly  know  how,  out 
of  this  habit  of  your  mind." 

How  satisfactory  is  this  exposure  of  an  old  and  firm 
prejudice!  Who  shall  dare  in  future  to  attach  to  the 
words  cause  and  effect  any  other  sense  than  that  of  an 
often-observed  connection?  Or  who  shall  venture,  hence- 
forward, to  deduce  an  inference  from  the  exploded 


103 


doctrine  of  causation,  in  favor  of  the  existence  of  a  first 
cause,  or  creative  power? 

Nevertheless,  unwilling  to  part  so  easily  with  an 
ancient  belief,  and  so  promptly  to  dissolve  an  inveterate 
habit  of  the  mind,  we  look  again  to  the  spheroids  before 
us;  turn  them  about,  examine  them  on  all  sides,  and 
endeavor,  if  possible,  to  discover  if  there  be  not  a  real, 
as  well  as  an  accidental  connection  between  a  and  h. 
At  length  we  find  that  some  of  them  may  be  broken 
open,  and  their  contents  exposed;  and  it  appears,  on 
examining  the  interior  of  a  pair,  marked  a  and  6,  or 
cause  and  effect,  that  the  spheroid  a  contains  a  series  of 
figures,  as  thus — 

4  +  8X2—6-2 

Within  the  spheroid  marked  h  is  found  another 
series — 

8X10+10-T-10 

Now,  removing  the  spheroidial  envelope,  and  retain- 
ing only  the  contents  and  the  copula,  a  and  h  stand 
thus— 

4+8X2— 6-^2  =8xlO+10-MO 
That  is  to  say,  we  are  simply  presented  with  an  equation; 
or  the  same  quantity  described  in  two  forms,  and  con- 
nected by  a  sign  which  indicates  their  equivalence,  and 
their  indissoluble  connection;  a  connection,  not  indeed 
oi power,  but  of  relation,  and  a  connection  so  absolute 
and  real,  to  receive  a,  and  to  reject  h  as  its  equivalent, 
would  be  a  conspicuous  absurdity. 

Encouraged  by  this  instance  of  success,  we  proceed, 
with  our  analysis,  and  taking  up  at  hazard,  from  dif- 


104 


ferent  parts  of  the  series,  several  pairs  of  spheroids, 
we  find  that,  in  every  instance  in  which,  by  force  or 
patient  assiduity,  we  can  break  the  shell,  the  contents 
consist  of  some  such  equation  as  was  discovered  in  the 
first.  We  have  therefore,  to  a  certain  extent,  refuted 
our  philosophic  reprover,  who  told  us  that  these  con- 
nected bodies  were  linked  only  by  juxta-position;  for 
we  have  ascertained  that  some  of  them,  at  least,  are 
wedded  by  a  real  and  indestructible  relationship.  But  then 
there  remain  (and  it  is  no  small  number)  the  infran- 
gible spheroids.  What  shall  be  said  concerning  them? 
Nothing  conclusive;  but  our  philosopher  is  now  deprived 
absolutely  of  the  force  of  his  specious  argument:  for  it 
is  710^  true,  as  he  affirmed,  that  the  connection  of  the 
spheroids,  was  nothing  but  a  sequency  which  might  have 
assumed  any  other  order  than  the  one  it  actually 
observed.  If,  on  the  faith  of  his  word,  we  had  dis- 
turbed the  order,  and  then  analysed  them,  nothing  would 
have  appeared  but  confusion.  And  if,  in  regard  to  the 
analysed  bodies,  he  is  free  to  surmise  that  they  are  not 
linked  by  a  real  connection;  we  are  equally  free  to  sup- 
pose that  a  true  and  abiding  bond  ties  them  one  to  the 
other. 

We  are  free  to  suppose  this;— and  should  in  fact  use 
our  freedom  so  far  as  to  entertain  the  hypothesis — an 
hypothesis  which  can  never  be  refuted,  until  all  the 
spheroids  are  actually  analysed — that  some  of  these  that 
defy  our  curiosity  contain,  like  those  we  have  opehed, 
equations;  and  that  the  residue  are  joined  by  an  efficient 
connection;  or  in  other  words,  that  a  is  di power,  properly 
so  called;  and  that  h  is  its  efiect. 


105 


The  reader  who  is  familiar  with  the  controversy  on 
the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  will  readily  make  the 
intended  use  of  the  above  illustration.  As  the  question 
concerning  human  agency  has  been  confused  and  em- 
barrassed by  considering  volition  as  one  and  the  same 
thing  in  all  sentient  beings,  and  in  all  instances;  whereas 
it  differs  by  essential  elements  in  different  cases;  so  has 
the  question  concerning  causation  been  surrounded 
with  difficulties,  by  the  common  practice  of  allowing  all 
conjoined  events,  vulgarly  designated  as  cause  and  effect, 
to  pass  undistinguished  under  one  and  the  same  des- 
cription. The  puerile  sophism  of  Hume  takes  its 
appearance  of  force  from  this  confusion  of  things  essen- 
tially different.  It  becomes,  therefore,  necessary  to 
distribute  into  classes  the  mass  of  things  popularly 
spoken  of  as  cause  and  effect. 

Such  constant  connections,  whether  belonging  to 
space  or  time,  may  be  arranged  under  three  heads, 
of  which  the  First  will  comprise  those  that  may  be 
analysed,  and  which  are  found  to  resolve  themselves 
into  simple  relations  of  equality,  or  proportion,  or  fit- 
ness. 

The  Second  comprehends  those  in  which  the  pres- 
ence of  an  efficient  power  must  be  confessed: 

And  the  Third  those  which  are  inscrutable  by  the 
human  mind,  and  therefore  ambiguous;  and  concerning 
which  a  surmise  only  can  be  entertained,  as  to  the  na- 
ture of  the  bond  which  unites  them;  but  concerning 
which,  it  may  safely  be  presumed,  that,  if  they  could  be 
laid  bare,  they  would  resolve  themselves  into  connec- 
tions, either  of  the  first  or  of  the  second  sort. 


106 

For  the  First  Class. — So  many  cubic  feet  of  water 
are  raised,  per  minute,  from  the  deepest  adit  of  a 
mine,  by  a  steam  engine;  and  in  popular  language  it  is 
usual  to  call  the  engine  the  cause,  and  the  raised  water 
the  effect.  But  if,  from  this  stupendous  apparatus,  are 
deducted  two  powers^  the  one  chemical,  the  other  me- 
chanical (presently  to  be  spoken  of)  then  the  whole 
vast  system  of  contrivances  resolves  itself  into  a  series 
or  apposition  of  relations  of  equality,  proportion,  or 
equilibrium:  and  it  is  a  proposition  of  precisely  the 
same  kind  to  say — 

4+8X3=36; 

Or  to  affirm  that  the  steam  engine  will  raise  so  many 
cubic  feet  of  water  every  minute  from  the  bottom  of  a 
mine.  Or  if  a  complete  description  of  a  steam  engine 
were  placed  on  one  side  of  the  sign  of  equivalence,  and 
the  measure  of  water  expressed  on  the  other,  the  pre- 
dication implied  would  be  infallible  and  invariable;  and 
to  affirm  of  its  two  members,  that  they  are  connected 
by  mere  constancy  of  occurrence,  would  be  an  absurdity 
of  the  same  sort,  as  to  say,  that  4+8X3  is  connected 
with  36  in  no  other  way  than  by  accidental  juxta-. 
position.  Heat  and  water,  applied  the  one  to  the  other, 
combine;  and  water  combined  with  heat  becomes  an 
elastic  vapor,  occupying  a  space  vastly  greater  than 
before.  Now,  though  the  reason  of  this  irresistible 
combination  has  not  hitherto  been  found,  we  are  free  to 
suppose  that  it  is  the  consequence  of  a  relation  of  oc- 
cult form  in  the  two  elements;  and  the  hypothesis  is 
favored  by  all  that  is  actually  known  of  the  structure  of 


107 


the  material  world.  Meanwhile  we  assign  this  unknown 
fact  or  hidden  power,  to  our  third  class,  and  after  de- 
ducting it,  then  resolve  the  complicated  machinery  of 
the  steam  engine  into  an  equilibrium  of  forces. 

All  the  works  of  human  ingenuity  are  resolvable  into 
cases  of  equilibrium,  or  equivalence:  and,  in  like  man- 
ner, the  functions  of  plants  and  animals, — their  growth, 
agencies,  and  decay,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  inter- 
action of  the  elements,  are  also  to  be  resolved  into 
connections  or  relations  of  this  first  class.  And  if  the 
business  of  natural  philosophy  were  to  be  described  in 
a  single  phrase,  we  should  say  that  its  office  is,  as  the 
interpreter  of  the  creation,  to  exhibit  or  unfold  physical 
equations. 

It  is  hardly  needful  to  say  that,  in  reference  to  this 
first  order  of  causes  and  effects,  the  word  liberty  can 
have  no  place  whatever — can  assume  no  shadow  of 
meaning.  What  idea  can  we  affix  to  the  proposition, 
that  there  is  a  freedom  in  the  connection  between  twice 
three  and  six?  And  if  the  sister  term  necessity  may  be 
applied  on  occasions  of  this  sort,  it  adds  nothing  to  the 
perspicuity  of  our  notions.  It  is,  we  readily  grant, 
necessarily  true  that  seven  taken  three  times  makes 
twenty-one.  But  why  should  we  not  be  content  with 
simply  saying  that  it  is  certainly  true;  or,  better  still — 
that  it  is  true.  All  that  the  mind  can  understand  is 
contained  in  the  very  modest  expression  which  declares 
that  three  times  seven  is  twenty-one.  And  to  talk  about 
necessity  in  such  an  instance,  is  as  rational,  as  would  be 
the  pomposity  of  affirming,  that  three  times  seven  is  im 
mutably,  and  by  the  adamantine  decree  of  eternal  truth, 
equal  to  twenty- one! 


108 


This  is  an  absurdity  of  one  kind:  and  the  history  of 
the  controversy  would  furnish  a  thousand  instances  of 
such  learned  verbosity.  The  opposite  absurdity  is  that 
of  Hume  and  others,  who,  confounding  causes  and  ef- 
fects of  all  kinds,  affirm  of  all  alike,  that  they  are  nothing 
but  often-observed  sequences;  whereas  a  large  propor- 
tion are  intelligible  relations,  which  cannot  be  denied 
or  separated  without  a  contradiction  in  terms. 

It  may  seem  superfluous  to  remind  the  reader,  that 
all  effects  belonging  to  this  first  class  are  directly  cog- 
nisable by  their  relation  to  their  causes.  The  intelligence 
which  knows  the  antecedent,  knows  also  the  consequent, 
when  that  consequent  is  a  correlative  equality  or  pro- 
portion. 

II.  In  defining  the  Second  Class  of  causes  and 
effects,  or  those  wherein  the  presence  of  an  efficient 
power  must  be  confessed,  it  cannot  be  thought  necessary, 
as  a  preliminary,  either  to  insist  upon  the  demonstra- 
tion, a  priori,  of  the  existence  of  a  First  Cause,  or  to 
state  the  argument  a  posteriori.  This  great  truth  is 
here  assumed  as  unquestionably  established  by  the  two 
methods,  separately  and  conjointly.  But  it  follows 
from  it,  that  the  worlds  of  matter  and  mind,  with  all 
their  contrivances  atid  forms,  are  ejffects  of  that  First 
Cause,  and  that  this  relationship  is,  in  the  most  absolute 
sense,  real  and  indissoluble;  nor  even  to  be  imagined 
as  broken,  otherwise  than  by  the  annihilation  of  the 
eflfect. 

The  doctrine  of  Hume  and  his  followers,  (and  of 
many  of  his  opponents),  That  we  know,  and  can  know 
nothing  of  cause  and  effect,  beyond  the  fact  of  invaria- 


109 


ble  sequency,  is,  by  a  logical  necessity,  atheistical.* 
That  is  to  say,  it  has  no  meaning,  and  can  have  no 
appearance  of  truth,  except  on  the  assumption,  that  the 
belief  in  a  First  Cause  is  incapable  of  proof.  For  if 
that  belief  is  by  any  means  established,  the  fact  of  effi- 
cient causation  is  established  with  it;  and  it  is  no  longer 
true,  that  we  know  of  no  connection  between  cause  and 
effect  beyond  that  of  invariable  sequency. f 

Whence  the  human  mind  derives  its  notion  of  power, 
might  be  shewn;  but  it  can  never  be  imagined  that  the 
reason  of  the  connection  between  power  and  its  effect 
can  be  exhibited.  This  were,  indeed,  to  penetrate 
beyond  the  deepest  secrets  of  nature.  Yet  this  con- 
nection, though  not  to  be  analysed,  must  be  affirmed  to 
be  necessary,  or,  more  properly,  infallible:  for  to  sup- 
pose otherwise,  would  be  only  a  circumlocutory  denial 
of  the  very  existence  of  power.  Power  not  productive 
of  its  effect  is  not  power,  but  is  either  inertness  or 
weakness.  And  again,  the  denial  of  liberty  to  power, 
if  liberty  means  freedom  from  restraint,  would,  for  the 
very  same  reason,  be  absurd;  and  thus,  as  we  have 
before  observed,  liberty  and  necessity  merge,  the  one  . 
in  the  other,  when  we  approach  the  footstool  of  supreme 
excellence  and  perfection. 


^  Hume  ("Treatise  of  Human  Nature")  gives  his  reader  free  leave  to 
draw  this  inference,  which  he  is  too  modest  himself  to  name. 

t  Bro%vn,  while  insisting  upon  the  fact,  that  we  can  conceive  of  nothing' 
as  coming  between  Almighty  Power  and  the  effect,  loses  sight  of  the  ques- 
tion, whether  the  human  mind  has  no  idea  of  connection  beyond  antecedence    -    "     </ 
and  sequence.     It  does,  by  its  oion  power,  conceive  of  power  as  somethinj  vf^^  h- 
more  than  the  juxta-position  of  events. 

10 


e  * 


■t 


110 


But  if  the  word  liberty  were  to  be  taken  in  the  vul- 
gar sense  of  the  words  range  or  scope,  it  might  then  be 
asked.  What  (with  due  reverence  ^)  should  be  thought 
of  the  Hberty  of  the  First  Cause?  We  must  approach 
this  question  from  beneath.  Now,  if  for  a  moment  it 
be  assumed  that  power,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word, 
is  the  endowment  of  created  minds,  we  can  conceive 
of  it  only  as  related  to,  first,  the  actual  existences 
known  to  that  mind  [its  own  attributes  included),  and, 
secondly,  to  such  possible  existences  as  may  lie  within 
its  faculty  of  conception,  and  also  within  the  circle  of 
its  agency.  And  then,  if  that  created  mind  be  thought 
of  as  (in  its  degree)  wise  and  holy,  every  exercise  of 
its  power  will  be  determined  necessarily,  or,  which  is 
a  far  better  term,  invariably,  or  certainly,  in  that  one 
manner  which  truth  and  goodness  prescribe,  whenever 
either  truth  or  goodness  is  interested  in  the  decision. 

But  something  more  than  this  may  be  conceived  of; 
and  we  think  that  the  notion  of  stern  fixedness,  or  inva- 
riable sameness,  which  is  apt  to  be  conjoined  in  our 
minds  with  the  idea  of  unalterable  wisdom  and  rectitude, 
is  happily  dispelled  when  this  something,  more  is  duly 
taken  into  the  account.  A  hundred  or  more  angular 
or  curve  lines,  all  of  equal  length,  yet  dissimilar,  may 
be  drawn  from  the  centre  to  the  circumference  of  a 
circle.  Nor  is  it  an  irrational  supposition,  that  a  hundred 
or  more  courses  of  conduct,  dissimilar,  yet  equidistant 


*  A  high  disadvantage  belonging  (inevitably)  to  discussions  of  this  order, 
is,  the  implication  of  the  Divine  perfections  %vith  obscure  questions.  Every 
sound  mind  will  take  care  to  hold  its  religious  sentiments  safe  from  the  inter- 
ference of  mere  abstractions. 


Ill 


as  paths  from  point  to  point,  may  present  themselves  to  '5' 
an  intelligence;  and  that  these  hundred  courses,  though 
by  the  hypothesis  they  possess  precisely  equal  recom- 
mendations, both  to  the  rational  and  moral  faculties, 
may  be  not  only  unlike  in  themselves,  but  may  lead 
the  being  that  pursues  them  to  vastly  distant  or  opposite 
points  of  his  possible  destiny.* 

Now  this  supposed  range,  or  scope,  or  liberty,  if  so 
it  must  be  called,  removes  the  idea  of  unvarying  uni- 
formity from  the  notion  of  a  high  degree  of  wisdom 
and  goodness:  it  enlarges  the  conception  of  supernal 
existence,  and  opens  before  the  meditative  mind  an  un- 
bounded field  of  various  opulence.  And  although,  in 
the  case  of  created  minds,  this  field  is  narrowed  by  the 
limitation  both  of  knowledge  and  of  power, — for  a  cre- 
ated mind  neither  knows  all  actual  existence  nor  all 
possible,  nor  does  its  power  extend  even  so  far  as  its 
knowledge, — ^yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  range  of  its 
agency  is  enlarged  in  one  direction,  as  well  as  confined 
in  another,  by  the  limitation  of  its  knowledge.  For 
though  it  has  not  before  it  all  really  equidistant  paths, 
many  that  are  not  so  in  fact  may  seem  so  to  be;  and  it 
may  happen  that,  v^^ithout  fault  or  culpable  folly,  it  may 
take  the  longer  for  the  shorter  course,  believing  the  two 
to  be  equal.  There  may  be  apparent  equations  where 
there  are  no  real  ones;  and  if  many  of  the  real  are 
unknown,  many  unreal  may  be  supposed. 

We  think  that  from  this  source  the  sphere  of  the 
agency  of  wise  and  holy  beings  is  incalculably  widened; 

*  See  note  L  L. 


112 


and  yet  without  admitting  at  all  the  notion  of  contingent 
volition.  An  attentive  reference  to  consciousness  will 
convince  any  one  that  it  is  the  law  or  usage  of  the  mind, 
on  occasions  when  an  alternative  must  be  taken,  where 
there  is  no  perceived  reason  which  should  determine 
the  choice,  to  throw  itself  back  upon  the  laws  of  its 
lower  nature;  that  is,  to  be  guided  by  the  involuntary 
suggestion  that  arises  at  the  instant  of  volition:  might 
we  say,  as  a  man  whose  eyes  are  bandaged  gives  his 
hand  to  a  child  to  lead  him  in  the  path?  We  have 
before  likened  the  perpetual  flow  of  ideas  through  the 
mind  to  the  operation  of  the  fly-wheel  in  a  machine; 
and  here  it  is  seen  to  maintain  the  unceasing  velocity  of 
action,  on  occasions  when  an  impulse  from  the  higher 
faculties  is  wanting,  and  when  otherwise  the  machine  must 
stand  still.  We  may  well  presume  that  this  fact  has  its 
analogy  in  a  higher  sphere  of  beings;  and  that  so  an 
inconceivable  diversity,  a  voluminous  variety,  is  thro\^n 
in  upon  the  theatre  of  celestial  life. 

And  now  in  reference  to  the  Divine  agency,  or  the 
exercises  of  infinite  power,  let  it,  with  becoming  mod- 
esty, be  affirmed,  that  the  universe  of  things  possible 
being  present  to  the  Divine  omniscience,  there  are  con- 
tained in  it  innumerable  hypotheses  of  being,  strictly 
equivalent  one  with  another,  so  far  as  benevolence  or 
wisdom  are  concerned.  To  advance  even  a  conjecture 
as  to  the  mode  of  determination  in  such  instances,  would 
be  in  the  last  degree  presumptuous  and  absurd.  It  is 
enough  to  know,  that  as  time,  or  succession  of  being,  is 
not  the  condition  of  the  Divine  existence,  such  deter- 
minations are  always  actualj  not  future,  and  therefore 


113 


nt)t  either  unknown  or  contingent.  Is  it  allowable  to 
say,  that  the  idea  of  the  exercises  of  supreme  power 
and  wisdom  is  enlarged  and  enriched  by  this  doctrine 
of  hypothetical  equivalents? 

The  meditative  mind,  in  looking  abroad  upon  the 
vastness  of  the  universe,  and  in  observing  that  the  edi- 
fice of  the  material  world  is  broken  into  innumerable 
portions,  far  separated  one  from  another,  naturally  en- 
tertains the  supposition  that  the  infinite  resources  of  the 
Divine  ingenuity  (if  the  word  may  be  allowed)  are 
copiously  unfolding  themselves  around  us,  in  all  possible 
modes.  And  again,  when  the  mind  turns  from  the  in- 
finitude of  space  to  the  infinitude  of  duration,  and  en- 
tertains, vaguely,  the  inconceivable  idea  of  eternity,  a 
parallel  supposition  arises  and  flits  before  the  imagina- 
tion,— that  this  unbounded  ingenuity — this  richness  of 
conception,  which  exhausts  all  forms  of  existence,  and 
all  combinations  of  those  forms,  will,  through  an  endless 
series  of  successive  creations  give  expression  in  turn  to 
each,  and  run  the  round  of  its  cycle  of  wisdom  and 
power,  until  whatever  may  he  has  actually  seen  the 
light  of  life.  And  is  it  then  true  that  human  nature  is 
destined  to  be  the  immortal  spectator  of  these  never- 
ending  developements? 

III.  It  only  remains  to  speak  of  the  Third  Class 
of  causes  and  effects;  or  those  connections,  of  which 
the  bond  is  either  ambiguous,  or  absolutely  inscrutable. 

To  enumerate  all  the  instances  of  this  sort  (or  all 
that  present  themselves  in  the  system  known  to  us) 
would  not  be  difficult.  But  it  is  enough  for  our  imme- 
diate purpose  to  mention,  as  illustrative  of  our  meaning, 
*10 


114 


the  most  conspicuous,  namely,  the  principle  of  gravita- 
tion, and  of  corpuscular  attraction  and  repulsion;  the 
principle  of  chemical  affinity,  that  is  to  say,  of  attractbn 
as  belonging  not  to  all  solid  masses  alike,  but  to  partic- 
ular bodies;  electrical  agencies  (of  both  kinds);  the 
principle  of  vegetable  life  (unless  it  be  resolvable  into 
chemical  or  electrical  action);  the  principle  of  animal 
life  (unless  this  also  may  be  so  resolved);  and,  lastly, 
the  power  of  mind  over  matter  and  over  itself.  In  all 
such  instances  of  action,  movement,  or  change  of  place, 
or  of  quality,  or  of  bulk,  or  of  function,  we  observe  the 
invariable  antecedent  and  consequent;  and  are  able  to 
reason  with  precision  upon  the  laws,  or,  as  we  might 
say,  modes,  of  the  hidden  power;  but  the  link  or  tie  is 
deeply  concealed.  The  reason  why  5,  succeeds  to  a, 
is  not  to  be  assigned:  the  most  perfect  science  pretends 
to  no  knowledge  of  this  ultimate  connection.  And,  in- 
deed, in  all  branches  of  knowledge,  Science  is  deemed 
to  have  fulfilled  her  task  when  she  has  proved  herself 
to  have  left  nothing  unknown — except  these  occult 
powers. 

Metaphysical  science  has  nothing  to  do  with  them, 
except  to  abstain  from  assuming  the  gratuitous  hypoth- 
esis, that  in  such  inscrutable  facts  there  is  no  real  con- 
nection, or  nothing  beyond  actual  sequency.  We  af- 
firm, that  the  presumption  gathered  from  all  parts  of 
science  is  altogether  against  such  an  hypothesis,  and, 
on  the  contrary,  strongly  favors  the  supposition,  that  the 
great  mechanical  laws  of  the  universe,  and  the  chemical 

*  See  note  M  M. 


115 


affinities  and  aversions  of  particular  bodies,  and  probably 
the  principles  of  vegetable  and  animal  life,  are  relations, 
or  rather  the  consequences  of  relations;  so  that  each 
effect  is  connected  with  its  cause  by  the  same  absolute 
bond  which  secures  the  result  of  a  mechanical  contri- 
vance, or  which  makes  the  two  members  of  an  equation 
inseparable.  We  venture  to  say,  that  the  course  of 
modern  chemical  discovery  tends  towards  the  belief 
that  chemical  action  is  the  necessary  consequence  of 
the  relation  subsisting  between  the  elementary  structure 
of  bodies,  and  that  if  the  occult  form  of  c  and  d  could 
be  exposed,  it  would  become  manifest  that  their  juxta- 
position must  issue  in  the  compound  e.* 

In  regard  to  the  hidden  powers  of  nature,  the  whole 
question  lies  between  contrivance,  or  relation,  and 
power, — that  is,  immediate  Divine  power;  not  between 
contrivance,  power,  and  merejuxta-position,  or  arbitrary 
sequency;  for  as,  on  tli,e  one  hand,  the  testimony  of 
natural  science  goes  to  establish  the  general  truth,  that 
causation  rests  upon  real  relations;  and  as,  on  the  other, 
jDiviwe  science  establishes  the  truth  of  a  first  and  intelli- 
gent Cause,  we  are  free  to  choose  between  the  two,  in 
all  cases  of  a  hidden  or  ambiguous  sort,  and  can  never 
be  compelled  to  take  up  the  hypothesis  of  contingent 
or  accidental  sequency,  which  is  neither  natural  to  the 
human  mind,  nor  confirmed  in  any  single  instance  by 
the  results  of  experimental  philosophy. 

In  turning  to  the  world  of  animal  and  intellectual 
life,    there  is  room  to   ask    whether    the   power   of 

*  See  note  N  N. 


116 


mind  over  matter,  and  over  itself,  should  be  regard- 
ed as, 

1.  The  consequence  of  a  relation  of  parts,  or  con- 
irivance  only;  or — 

2.  The  direct  exertion  of  Divine  power;  or — 

3..  A  derived  and  separate  (not  independent)  por- 
tion of  that  essential  power. 

Without  resting  at  all  upon  so  difficult  a  theme,  we 
may  just  say  that  we  should  reject  the^r^^  supposition, 
and  prefer  the  third  to  the  second.  Our  business  is  to 
affirm,  that  the  determination  of  such  questions  is  not, 
in  the  remotest  degree,  important  to  any  branch  of  in- 
tellectual, or  ethical,  or  theological  philosophy,  any 
more  than  an  analysis  of  the  principle  of  gravitation  is 
important  to  mechanical  science.  The  fact  is  enough, 
that  mind  has  power  to  move  and  modify  matter,  and 
to  move  and  to  modify  itself  If  its  possession  of  the 
first-named  power  were  qestioned,  we  might  establish 
the  fact  by  striking  the  sceptic;  or,  if  the  second  were 
doubted,  we  should  ask  him  to  propound  to  us  a  mathe- 
matical theorem,  and  we  would  engage,  even  w^hile 
assailed  by  many  disturbing  causes  from  without  and 
from  within,  to  hold  a  steady  intellectual  flight,  in  a  di- 
rect line,  from  the  data  to  the  conclusion,  and  should 
allege  the  true  solution  of  the  theorem  as  a  proof  incon- 
testible  that  mind  has  power, — a  power  introvertible,  as 
well  as  efficient  upon  matter. 

The  terms  liberty  and  necessity  may  be  alleged  to 
have  a  relation  to  this  ultimate  fact  of  the  power  of 
mind  over  itself.  If  liberty  might  be  taken  in  the  un- 
intelligible sense  of  contingency,  or  freedom  from  caus- 


117 


ation,  then  we  say  that  this  power,  as  belonging  to  the 
human  mind,  has  no  liberty;  for  it  always  stands  under 
a  triple  relationship,  namely,  to  its  own  attributes  and 
conditions,  to  the  world  of  actual  or  conceivable  exist- 
ence, and  to  the  interferences  of  Divine  power;  and  so 
far  from  its  being  insulated  from  reasons  and  motives,  it 
is  only  upon  and  among  reasons  and  motives  that  it  can 
work. 

But  if  by  liberty  be  meant  scope  or  range,  then  does 
this  power  incalculably  augment,  enlarge,  diversify,  and 
ennoble  the  agency  of  the  being  possessing  it.  Upon 
this  point  we  have  already  enlarged.  But  if  liberty 
means  freedom  from  restraint,  then  the  sad  truth  must 
be  confessed,  that  this  power,  in  the  human  subject,  is 
largely  invaded,  and  much  damaged  and  obstructed  by 
the  moral  ruin  that  has  afTpptp.H  the  race.  Man,  in  this 
sense,  is  free  only  in  degree;  and  it  is  in  contemplation 
of  this  lamentable  infringement  of  his  native  power, 
that  he  should  thankfully  receive  the  succor  and  the 
remedial  interference  offered  to  him  by  Christianity. 

The  correlative  term  necessity,  in  like  manner,  takes 
its  pertinence,  or  its  irrelevance,  from  the  precise  sense 
attached  to  it  when  connected  with  the  power  of  mind. 
In  the  sense  of  bondage,  impediment,  or  restraint,  man, 
as  we  have  just  said,  is  in  various  degrees  necessitated 
by  the  prevalence  of  inordinate  desires,  and  by  the  force 
of  inveterate  habits.  But  it  should  be  remembered, 
that  this  sort  of  necessity  is  not  held  in  any,  even  of  the 
most  momentous  affairs  of  life,  to  absolve  the  evil-doer 
from  his  responsibility  to  law,  or  to  discharge  him  from 
his  liability  to  punishment.     Theologians  have  no  need 


118 


to  resort  to  metaphysical  arguments  for  the  purpose  of 
establishing  the  truth,  that  a  debauched  habit  of  mind 
does  not  exonerate  a  man  from  the  load  of  his  guilt; 
or  at  least  they  need  not  do  so  until  the  enormous  sup- 
position is  recognised  and  acted  upon  in  courts  of  jus- 
tice. Who  does  not  see  that  the  acknowledgment  of 
a  principle  like  this  would,  in  a  day,  dissolve  the  entire 
framework  of  society?  And  shall  it,  if  inadmissible  oa 
earth,  be  published  and  received  as  a  maxim  of  the 
Divine  government?  A  proclamation  so  fearful  would 
convert  the  universe  into  a  prison-house  of  horrors. 
He  who  enters  upon  a  course  of  vice, /teZs  that  at  every 
step  his  moral  health  and  strength  are  impaired:  this 
alarming  consciousness  should  awaken  him  to  a  sense 
of  his  danger.  But  if  it  does  not  so  awaken  him,  no 
means  remain  (consistently  with  any  system  of  govern- 
ment by  laws  and  sanctions)  which  can  avert  from  him 
the  terrible  consequences  of  becoming  at  length  the 
helpless  slave  of  licentious  habits.  And  yet,  not  even 
the  last  stage  of  thraldom  absolutely  breaks  up  the  con- 
stitution of  human  nature:  man  is,  to  the  last  (unless 
frenzied),  open  to  a  sense  of  his  ultimate  welfare;  and 
the  motives  thence  derived,  if  understood^  are  always 
more  than  adequate  to  determine  the  conduct  of  a  ra- 
tional being.  And  besides,  instances  are  on  record  of 
moral  revolutions,  even  in  cases  apparently  the  most 
hopeless.  Man,  therefore,  though  his  true  liberty  is  greatly 
impaired,  never  becomes  (in  the  present  life)  so  neces- 
sitated as  to  render  a  recovery  strictly  impracticable. 

The  delusive  influence  of  the  ill-chosen  word  neces- 
sity, as  used  in  this  controversy,  increases  (might  we 


119 


say?)  in  geometrical  progression  at  every  step,  as  we 
ascend  from  material  causes  towards  the  higher  stage 
of  intellectual  agency.  Those  who  think  fit  to  do  so, 
may  very  harmlessly,  though  very  ineptly,  talk  of  the 
necessity  which  binds  together  the  parts  of  a  mathemati- 
cal proposition;  or  they  may  so  speak  of  the  connection 
of  causes  and  effects  in  the  system  of  animated  nature; 
and  they  may  still  advance  a  step,  without  being  liable 
to  a  conviction  of  absolute  error.  But  as  we  rise  on 
the  scale  of  life,  the  associated  ideas  that  cling  to  the 
term  actually  intercept  from  our  view  the  simple  matters 
of  which  we  are  speaking;  and  while,  perhaps,  our  chain 
of  reasoning  is  inform  correct,  it  is  in  fact  seductive  or 
false. 

To  speak  of  power  as  latent  or  inert,  is  a  solecism; 
at  least  it  is  not  the  notion  with  which  we  have  to  do. 
Can  we,  then,  conceive  of  power  active,  that  is  to  say, 
of  power  in  the  proper  and  dhly  intelligible  sense  of  the 
word,  as  not  related  to  any  subject  or  matter  whereupon 
it  works?  Or  can  we  conceive  of  power  as  an  attribute 
of  an  intelligent  and  of  a  moral  being,  and  yet  not  rela- 
ted to  the  knowledge  and  to  the  emotions  of  that  being? 
Or  could  we  deem  it  a  perfection  in  the  constitution  of 
a  rational  agent,  that  his  power  should  operate  like  a 
vague  and  brutal  violence,  taking  its  course  this  way 
and  that,  with  the  blind  vehemence  of  a  hurricane?  Or, 
is  not  rather  the  idea  of  rational  perfection  filled  up  by 
the  supposition  of  power,  related,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
its  subject,  by  the  bond  of  uniform  and  unfailing  effi- 
ciency; and  on  the  other,  to  the  knowledge  and  emo- 
tions of  the  agent,  by  the  tie  of  infallible  determination 


120 

or  direction?    Whatever  is  deducted  from  the  constancy 
or  invariable  sequency  of  these  connections,  makes  a 
L4mb-  --►  proportionate  deduction  fronti  the  excellence  and  true 

^^K   /y  freedom  of  the  agent.     The  agent  whose  power  is  not 

thus  necessitated,  in  the  most  absolute  sense,  is,  to  the 
whole  extent  of  the  want  of  necessity,  not  free.  A  de- 
ficiency of  necessity,  in  the  higher  sense  of  the  word,  is 
an  increase  of  necessity  in  the  lower.  And  here,  once 
/^.  3gain,  we  must  note  the  synonymous  import  of  the  words 

liberty  and  necessity,  when  the  highest  perfection  is 
spoken  of.  And  it  is  manifest  that  this  necessity,  far 
from  carrying  with  it  any  idea  of  bondage,  or  confine- 
ment, or  fatality,  is  the  very  secret  and  the  indispensa- 
ble condition  of  the  full  and  unimpaired  liberty  of 
celestial  natures. 

The  controversy  comes  to  a   point  on  this  position: 
nor  is   it  difficult  to  discern  in  what  way,  by  the  mysti- 
fications that  belong  to  theological  argument,  and  by  the 
malignant  obscurations  that  have  been  shed  over  it  from 
the  hands  of  those  who  have  labored  to  subvert  religion 
and   morality,  and  to  debauch  and  vilify  man, — a  very 
^^J?W<r^^^ft       intelligible  matter  has  been  wrapped  in  dark  clouds  of 
difficulty.     Let  but  the   difference  between  mechanical 
laws  and  living  agencies  be  confounded,  and  let  the  ele- 
mentary  differences  that  distinguish  the  several  orders 
of  sentient  beings  be  lost  sight  of,   and  let  the  gloomy 
C#  /c-#i^^^  -      ^°^^  necessity  be  put  in  the  place  of  the  simple  words 
^^     't    .   '.-      relation  and  causation;  and  then  the  way  will  be  clear 
for  talking  of  such  facts  as  the  fall  of  bodies  to  the  earth, 
or  the  collapse  of  chemical  elements,  and  of  the  agency 
,  of  the  highest  order  of  mtelligencps,  who  seek  their 


^fi^  J  i 


% 


121 


happiness  at  large  on  all  the  fields  of  the  universe,  under 
one  and  the  same  set  of  affected  phrases.  And  thus, 
because  mind  is  furnished  with  knowledge,  and  is  sus- 
ceptible of  emotion,  and  is  endowed  with  power,  and  is 
thus  qualified  to  maintain  and  enlarge  its  well-being 
through  a  course  of  endless  advancements;  and  be- 
cause this  well-being  is  secured  by  its  invariable  con- 
nection with  an  established  order  of  events,  therefore 
(say  sophists)  it  becomes  reasonable  to  speak  of  the  lot 
of  such  high  intelligences  as  if  it  were  overruled  by  the 
same  fatality  which  confines  a  stone  to  the  spot  \yhereon 
it  has  fallen! 

For  the  purpose  of  banishing  for  ever  these  delusions, 
it  would  be  well  to  lay  aside  entirely  the  word  necessity, 
which  is  ridiculously  superfluous  and  redundant  in  some 
of  its  applications,  and  absurd  or  seductive  in  others. 
If,  for  example,  we  have  occasion  to  speak  of  a  known 
relation  of  equality  or  proportion,  why  not  be  content 
with  the  simple  assertion,  that  the  predicate  is  true  of 
the  subject?  or  that  a-\-h  \s  equal  to  c  ?  Or,  if  a  con- 
clusion has  been  derived  from  a  somewhat  complicated 
series  of  proofs,  so  that  a  moderate  asservation  seems 
to  be  called  for,  let  the  word  certainty  suffice  us. 
Certainty  is  the  knowledge  of  truth,  obtained  by  labor 
and  research;  and  when  by  labor  and  research  we  have 
gained  the  knowledge  of  any  complex  system  of  rela- 
tions, it  may  be  granted  that  there  is  a  propriety  in 
speaking  of  the  certainty  of  those  relations:  though  in 
fact  nothing  more  is  meant  than  what  is  affirmed  when 
the  relation  is  expressed  in  the  very  simplest  and  most 
modest  form. 

11 


%1 


122 


If  the  noble  liberty — the  range,  and  scope,  and  un- 
restrained capacity  of  happiness,  which  is  the  distinction 
of  rational  agents  of  the  higher  orders,  be  the  subject  of 
discourse;  and  if  we  would  express  the  fact  that  such 
beings  rule  their  destinies  through  the  changeful  scenes 
of  immortality  by  their  knowledge  and  virtue,  we  shall 
do  well  to  avoid  the  employment  of  a  phrase  which 
seems  to  imply  that  those  destinies  are  overruled  in 
some  other  way  than  by  the  combinations  of  knowledge, 
virtue,  and  power. 

All  that  is  important  to  ethics  and  theology  is  implied 
in  the  knowledge  of  the  introvertible  power  of  mind; 
and  we  must  here  observe,  that  its  existence  as  a  phy- 
siological fact — as  a  fact  which  forms  the  elementary 
difference  between  man  and  the  inferior  classes  of 
sentient  beings,  has  been  too  little  insisted  upon  by 
ethical  and  religious  controvertists;  and  though  famil- 
iarly known  to  all  men,  has  been  (like  ten  thousand 
other  familiar  facts)  overlooked  by  philosophers. 

The  Arminian  divine,  inwardly  persuaded,  he  knows 
not  on  what  ground,  that  human  nature  contains  a 
something  more  than  the  passivity  of  brute  matter,  or 
of  animal  life,  has  recourse  to  the  figment  of  Contingent 
Volition;  and  then,  to  give  his  unintelligible  notion  an 
appearance  of  consistency,  has  been  led  to  the  enormous 
error  of  denying  the  Divine  fore-knowledge.  Thus,  in 
his  zeal  to  defend  one  attribute  of  Deity  he  has  demol- 
ished another.  Why  will  he  not  be  content  with  the 
simple  principles  of  human  nature,  as  known  to  all  men, 
and  as  recognised  in  the  transactions  of  every  day,  and 
with  the  plain  evidence  of  the  Bible,  which  always 


123 


takes  up  and  supposes  the  existence   of  those  prin- 
ciples? 

His  opponent,  the  Calvinist,  spurning  the  absurdities 
of  Arminian  metaphysics,  beheves  that,  when  he  has 
scattered  these  sophisms,  he  has  exhausted  the  subject 
of  human  agency,  and  may  triumphantly  return  from 
the  vanquished  field  to  his  own  theological  position; 
nor  deems  it  necessary  once  to  lay  aside  his  high 
lenses,  or  to  look  abroad  upon  human  nature  as  it  shews 
itself  to  the  naked  eye  of  common  sense.  Then  he 
goes  to  his  Bible,  cased  in  metaphysical  certainties,  and 
proceeds,  without  scruple  or  compunction,  to  apply  the 
crushing  engine  of  dogmatical  exposition  to  all  passages 
that  do  not  naturally  fall  in  with  the  abstractions  which 
he  has  framed  to  himself.  Meanwhile,  men  of  sense 
are  disgusted,  and  sceptics  glory.  How  shall  these 
evils  be  remedied? — how,  unless  by  the  prevalence  of  a 
better — a  genuine  system  of  interpretation? 

But  even  without  this  better  exposition,  a  great  and 
important  reform  would  spontaneously  follow  from  a 
more  vivid  persuasion  of  the  reality  of  the  great  facts 
affirmed  in  the  Scriptures.  Let  but  the  quickening 
affirmations  of  the  inspired  writers  be  allowed  to  take 
effect  on  the  ground  of  the  ordinary  motives  of  human 
life;  let  it  but  be  believed  that  the  Son  of  God  has 
come  to  inform  men  (his  fellows,  by  an  ineffable  conde- 
scension,) of  a  future  danger  to  which  all  are  liable; 
and  to  impart  to  them  freely  a  benefit  they  could  never 
have  obtained  by  their  own  efforts;  and  then  it  will  no 
more  seem  pertinent  or  necessary  to  adjust  the  terms  of 
this  message  of  mercy  to  metaphysical  subtilties,  than 


a 


^/. 


124 


it  does  to  do  the  like  when  a  friend  snatches  a  friend 
from  ruin,  or  when  a  father  bears  his  children  in  his  arms 
from  a  scene  of  perils.  How  much  mischief  has  arisen 
from  the  supposition  that  a  mystery  belongs  to  the  mat- 
ter of  salvation,  which  waits  to  be  cleared  up  by  phi- 
losophy. 

Philosophy,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  at  length  work  its 
way  through  its  own  difficulties.  But  the  result  to 
Christianity  of  so  happy  a  success,  would  simply  be,  to 
set  in  a  stronger  light  the  enormous  folly  of  obstructing 
the  course  of  a  momentous  practical  affair  by  the 
impertinences  of  learned  disputation. 


rroTES. 


Note  A.  p.  18. 

The  devout  Edwards. — The  life  of  Edwards  should  be  perused 
by  every  one  who  reads  his  "Essay  on  Freedom  of  Will."     Let 
it  be  said  that   his  style  of  Christianity  might  have  borne  some 
corrections;  and  let  it  also  be  admitted,  that,  in  his  modesty,  and 
his  low  estimation  of  himself,  and  in  his  love  of  retirement,  his 
melancholic  temperament  had  an  influence.     After  every  deduc- 
tion of  this  sort   has  been  made,  it   must  be   granted,  that  thii 
eminent  man,  whose  intellectual  superiority  might  have  enabled 
him  to  shine  in  European  colleges  of  learning,  displayed  a  meek 
greatness  of  soul  which  belongs  only  to  those  who  derive  their 
principles  from  the  Gospel.     How  refreshing  is  the  contrast  of 
sentiments  which  strikes  us  in  turning  from  the  private  corres- 
pondence of  men  who  thought  of  nothing  beyond  their  personal 
fame  as  philosophers  or  writers,  to  the  correspondence  and  diary 
of  a  man  like  Edwards!     In  the  one  c&se,  the  single,  paramount 
motive — literary  or  philosophic  vanity — lurks  in  every  sentence, 
unblushingly  shews  itself  on  many  a  page,  and  when  most  con- 
cealed, is  concealed  by  an  affectation  as  loaihsome  as  the  fault  it 
hides.     But  how  much  of  this  deformed  aelf-Iove  could  the  most 
diligent  detractor  cull  from  the  private  papers  or  works  of  the 
President  of  the  New  Jersey   College?     We  question  if  a  single 
sentence  which  could  be  fairly  construed  to  betray  the  vanity  or 
ambition  of  superior  intelligence   is  any  where  to  be  found  in 
them.     Edwards  daily  contemplated  a  glory,   an  absolute  ex- 
cellence, which  at  once  checked  the  swellings  of  pride,  and 
sickened  him  of  the  praise  which  his  powers  might  have  won 
from  the  world. 

*11 


126 


Edwards  (though,  in  listening  to  his  own  account  of  himself, 
one  would  not  think  it,)  was  a  man  of  genius — we  mean  imagina- 
tive, and  open  to  all  those  moving  sentiments  which  raise  high 
aouls  above  the  present  scene  of  things.  Among  the  reasons 
which  inclined  him  to  excuse  himself  from  the  proffered  presi- 
dency, he  alleges, — First,  his  own  defects,  unfitting  him  for  such 
an  undertaking,  "many  of  which  are  generally  known,"  says  he, 
''besides  others  which  my  own  heart  is  conscious  of.  I  have  a 
constitution  in  many  respects  peculiarly  unhappy,  attended  with 
flaccid  solids;  vapid,  sizy,  and  scarce' fluids;  and  a  low  tide  of 
spirits,  often  occasioning  a  kind  of  childish  weakness,  and  con- 
temptibleness  of  speech,  presence,  and  demeanor;  with  a  disa- 
greeable dulness  and  stiffness,  much  unfitting  me  for  conversation, 
but  more  especially  for  the  government  of  a  college."  This  de- 
scription of  his  mental  conformation  is  curious,  physiologically ^ 
as  an  anatomy  of  a  mind  so  remarkable  for  its  faculty  of  abstrac- 
tion. May  we  not  say,  that  this  very  poverty  of  constitution,  this 
sluggishness  and  aridity,  this  feeble  pulse  of  life,  was  the  very 
secret  of  his  extraordinary  power  of  analysis.'  The  supposition 
leads  to  speculations  concerning  the  physical  conditions  of  the 
mind,  which  must  not  here  be  pursued;  but  it  may  be  remarked, 
in  passing,  that  it  must  be  from  the  copious  collection  and  right 
use  of  facts  of  this  sort,  that  progress  will  be  made  (if  ever)  in 
the  science  of  mind. 

But,  notwithstanding  the  apparent  coldness  of  his  temperament, 
■Edwards  was  manifestly  susceptible,  and  in  no  common  degree, 
of  those  emotions  which  are  rarely  conjoined  with  the  philosophic 
faculty.  Let  in  instance  be  taken  from  his  diary: — ''There 
seemed  to  be,  as  \t  were,  a  calm,  sweet  cast,  an  appearance  of 
divine  glory,  in  almost  every  thing:  God's  excellency,  his  wisdom, 
his  purity  and  love,  seemed  to  appear  in  every  thing:  in  the  sun, 
moon,  and  stars;  in  the  clouds  and  blue  sky;  in  the  grass, 
flowers,  trees;  in  the  water,  and  all  nature,  which  used  greatly 
to  fix  my  mind.  I  often  used  to  sit  and  view  the  moon  for  continU' 
ance;  and,  in  the  day,  spent  much  time  in  viewing  the  clouds 
and  sky,  to  behold  the  sweet  glory  of  God  in  these  things:  in  the 
mean  time  singing  forth,  with  a  low  voice,  my  contemplations  of 
the  Creator  and  Redeemer.  And  scarce  any  thing  among  all  the 
works  of  nature  was  so  sweet  to  me  as  thunder  and  lightning; 


127 


formerly  nothing  had  been  so  terrible  to  me.  While  thus  en- 
gaged, it  always  seemed  natural  to  me  to  sing  or  chant  forth  my 
meditations;  or  to  speak  my  thoughts  in  soliloquies  with  a  singing 
voice." 

That  Edwards,  by  constitution  of  mind,  was  more  than  a  dry 
and  cold  thinker,  might  be  proved  by  reference  to  many  passages 
even  in  his  ''Essay  on  Free  Will"  as  well  as  his  less  abstruse 
writings.  He  was  master  in  fact,  of  a  simple  eloquence,  of  no 
mean  order: — "Holiness,  as  I  then  wrote  down  some  of  my  con- 
templations on  it,  appeared  to  me  to  be  of  a  sweet,  pleasant, 
charming,  serene,  calm  nature;  which  brought  an  inexpressible 
purity,  brightness,  peacefulness,  and  ravishment,  to  the  soul. 
In  other  words,  that  it  made  the  soul  like  a  field  or  garden  of 
God,  with  all  manner  of  pleasant  flowers;  all  pleasant,  delight- 
ful, and  undisturbed,  enjoying  a  sweet  calm,  and  the  gently 
vivifying  beams  of  the  sun.  The  soul  of  a  true  Christian,  as  I 
tlien  wrote  my  meditations,  appeared  like  such  a  little  white 
flower  as  we  see  in  the  spring  of  the  year,  low  and  humble,  on 
the  ground;  opening  its  bosom  to  receive  the  pleasant  beams  of 
the  sun's  glory;  rejoicing,  as  it  were,  in  a  calm  rapture;  diffusing 
around  a  sweet  fragancy;  standing  peacefully  and  lovingly  in 
the  midst  of  other  flowers  round  about;  all,  in  like  manner, 
opening  their  bosoms  to  drink  in  the  light  of  the  [sun.  There 
was  no  part  of  creature  holiness  that  I  had  so  great  a  sense  of  its 
loveliness  as  humility,  brokennesa  of  heart  and  poverty  of  spirit: 
and  there  was  nothing  that  I  so  earnestly  longed  for.  My  heart 
panted  after  this, — to  lie  low  before  God,'  as  in  the  dust,  that  I 
might  be  nothing,  and  that  God  might  be  all,  that  I  might  be- 
come as  a  little  child." 

These  sentiments  were  not  the  exuberances  of  a  youthful 
melancholic  ardor,  but  gave  tone  to  the  character  and  conduct  of 
the  man  through  life.  To  accomplish  the  will  of  God  on  earth 
was  the  ruling  motive  of  his  soul;  and  to  have  sought  his  own 
glory,  he  would  have  thought  an  enormous  departure  from  true 
virtue.  If  his  definition  of  true  virtue  be  liable  to  objection,  his 
exemplification  of  it  shewed  him  to  have  understood  practically 
the  secret  of  all  substantial  goodness. 


128 

Note  B.  p.  25. 

The  pendulum-spring  of  a  watch  is  a  very  nice  instrument^ 
and  one  in  the  construction  of  which  three  sciences,  besides 
manual  skill,  are  called  in  to  give  their  aid.  In  the  first  place, 
the  due  action  of  the  shining  thread,  which  maintains  the  oscil- 
latory movement  of  the  balance-wheel,  depends  upon  its  con- 
formity to  the  mathematical  conditions  of  the  spiral  curve.  Then 
must  be  considered  the  doctrine  of  elasticity,  "«<  tensio,  sic  vis," 
and  the  mechanical  laws  of  motion,  which  are  to  determine  the 
necessary  proportion  between  the  thickness  of  the  spring  and  its 
length  and  then,  too,  the  very  delicate  calculation  of  the  taper, 
as  connected  with  the  kind  of  escapemerU  with  which  it  is  destined 
to  act, — one  kind  of  escapement  requiring  a  spring  of  equal  bulk 
throughout,  while  the  more  accurate  kinds  demand  a  diminishing 
substance  from  end  to  end.  The  third  science  implied  in  the 
proper  construction  of  this  little  agent,  is  that  which  teaches  the 
method  of  imparting  to  the  rude  metal  of  which  it  is  formed,  its 
elastic  property,  and  of  tempering  it  in  the  due  degree.  In  fact 
both  chemistry  and  metallurgy  are  concerned  in  this  business; 
and  in  the  manufacture  of  steel  for  watch-springs,  much  of  that 
peculiar  or  workshop  knowledge  is  demanded  which  is  not  to.  be 
found  in  books.  Now,  the  exact  movement  of  the  pendulum- 
spring  is  that  ultimate  result  which  brings  to  a  point,  if  we  might 
so  speak,  the  converging  lines  of  several  distinct  sciences.  Who 
shall  estimate  the  confusion  that  must  arise  from  an  attempt  to 
treat  as  one  these  several  calculations  and  processes,  which  are 
essentially  different,  and  which  must  be  held  apart  until  they  are 
combined  in  the  various  conditions  of  the  spring.? 

That  practical  science  which  relates  to  the  strength  of  m.^tk- 
RiALS,  in  like  manner  combines  the  principles  of  several  sciences. 
Let  the  problem  be,  to  determine  the  necessary  breadth  and  depth 
of  the  girder  of  a  floor,  that  shall  sustain  a  given  weight,  the  length 
of  the  span  also  being  given.  Now,  these  dimensions  are  not  to 
be  found  without  having  recourse, ^/,s<,  to  the  higher  mathemat- 
ics, or  these  purely  abstract  truths  which  are  independent  of  all 
the  laws  of  the  actual  world,  and  which  would  be  what  they  are, 
although  there  were  no  such  principle  as  gravitation,  or  no 
material  system.  In  the  next  place,  this  law  of  gravitation  must 
be  understood,  in  order  to  find  the  point  of  the  strain,  as  well  as 


129 


the  true  proportion  between  depth  and  breadth.  And,  lastly,  the 
peculiar  properties  of  the  several  species  of  timber  must  be  pre- 
cisely known,  and  known  by  experiment.  The  proportion  between 
depth,  breadth,  and  length,  will  vary,  as  the  compressibility, 
cohesive  force,  toughness,  &c.  of  oak,  fir,  &c.,  or  of  the  several 
kinds  of  oak  or  fir  vary.  British,  Riga,  Norway,  American  oak, 
will  give  each  its  precise  dimension  to  the  girder;  and  it  is  not  the 
mathematician,  hnt  the  naturalist,  who  must  inform  the  practical 
man  on  these  points.  (See  Tredgold's  "Elementary  Principles 
of  Carpenty,"  section  x.  on  the  Nature  and  Properties  of  Timber. 
The  same  able  writer's  treatise  on  the  "Strength  of  Iron"  affoids 
a  multitude  of  instances  of  a  similar  kind.  See  also  Barlow's 
"Essay  on  the  Strength  and  Stress  of  Timber.") 

Now,  let  it,  in  these  cases,  be  supposed  that  the  mathematician, 
dogmatically  confident  of  his  demonstrations,  were  (and  this  is 
in  fact  the  fault  of  the  earlier  mathematicians,  and  not  seldom  of 
Leibnitz,)  to  determine  the  problem  above  mentioned,  as  if  it 
were  a  pure  abstraction,  or,  if  he  referred  loosely  to  certain  vulgar 
facts  concerning  the  strength  of  timber,  were  neither  to  make 
experiments  of  this  physical  kind,  nor  to  swerve  at  all  from  his 
mathematical  processes  in  regard  to  them: — in  this  case  all  his 
products  must  be  erroneous.  Or,  though  correct  mathematically, 
they  would  be  inapplicable  to  the  real  world,  and  useless,  or  worse 
than  useless,  in  practice.  It  is  but  of  late  that  these  cases  of  com- 
plicated PRINCIPLES  have  been  made  matters  of  science.  We 
must  not  wonder,  therefore,  that,  within  the  hazy  precincts  of  in- 
tellectual philosophy,  distinctions  and  separations  of  a  parallel  kind 
have  scarcely  at  all  been  regarded.  Now,  to  return  to  the  instance 
before  us,  of  the  "Treatise  on  Freedom  of  Will,"  the  argument 
is,  in  the  main,  abstract,  but  not  purely  so;  for  besides  the  ad- 
mixture of  Scripture  proofs,  the  physiology  of  the  human  mind 
is' iaiien  up  diS  its  material  or  subject,  and  yet  far  too  loosely  and 
vaguely  to  satisfy  those  who  look  at  human  nature  as  an  object 
of  natural  philosophy.  Or,  to  refer  allusively  to  the  illustration 
above  given,  Edwards  is  an  a.ccomi)\ished  mathematician;  hut  he 
thought  little,  or  did  not  take  into  his  calculations,  the  difference 
between  oak  and  fir.  His  "Treatise  on  the  Will"  is,  to  a  true 
philosophy  of  human  nature,  as  the  demonstrations  of  Leibnitz — 
Demonstrationes  Nova  de  Resistentia  Solidorum — are  to  modern 
piechanical  science. 


130 

Note  C.  p.  26. 

The  ingenious  author  of  "Studies  of  Nature"  toiled  vainly  to 
establish  his  theory  of  the  tides  on  the  principle  of  the  melting  of 
arctic  snows  and  ices:  he  should  have  lived  before  Newton,  and 
might  then  have  enjoyed  his  century  or  two  of  celebrity.  He 
sought  for  a  particular  truth  among  a  set  of  causes  in  which  it 
was  not  to  be  found.  Pliny  might  have  arrived  at  the  real  fact,  for 
he  set  foot  upon  the  true  course,  as  did  Bacon;  but  St.  Pierre 
could  never  have  reached  it.  The  doctrine  of  tides  furnishes 
another  example  of  the  combination  of  causes  of  different  orders 
in  a  single  result.  It  is  asked,  why  does  the  Thames  at  Lon- 
don bridge  fill  its  bed  at  three  o'clock  to-day?  Shall  it  be  said,  be- 
cause the  waters  of  the  ocean  obey  the  law  of  gravitation,  and 
are  heaped  into  a  mighty  wave  by  sun  and  moon.  But  this  ex- 
planation, though  the  true  one,  will  not  adjust  itself  to  the  facts; 
and  we  must  calculate  all  the  local  causes,  the  turns  of  the  river, 
the  form  of  the  bed,  the  currents  of  the  channel,  before  we  can 
bring  the  abstract  theory  into  correspondence  with  the  actual 
event  of  high-tide  at  three  o'clock.  These  essentially  different 
classes  of  causes  must  both  be  calculated,  but  must  not  be  con- 
founded or  confused. 

Note  D.  p.  27. 

The  disposition  of  the  French  people,  as  compared  with  the 
English,  to  ascend  too  high  in  the  discussion  of  practical  ques- 
tions, is  a  very  remarkable  fact.  We  should  not  satisfactorily 
account  for  it  on  one  ground  only.  It  must  not  be  said  of  the 
English,  that  they  are  not  a  philosophical  people;  yet  it  is  true  that, 
whenever  the  substantial  interests  of  life  are  under  discussion, 
they  shew  a  determined  dislike  to  abstract  or  metaphysical  argu- 
mentation;— they  will  listen  to  nothing  that  is  not  unquestionably 
pertinent  and  proximate.  The  good  sense,  the  love  of  despatch 
and  of  perspicuity,  which  belong  to  the  mercantile  character,  are 
here  apparent.  And  may  we  not  also  say,  that  the  mingled  mod- 
esty and  pride  of  the  English  character  have  a  share  in  producing 
the  same  effect?  An  Englishman  avoids  speaking  of  matters  to 
which  he  has  not  given  sufficient  attention;  he  will  not  expose 
himself  to  ridicule  by  venturing  beyond  his  line:  he  therefor* 
leaves  philosophy  to  philosophers,  and  talks  of  politics  and  com- 
merce only  as  matters  of  fact. 


131 


But  the  Frenchman  has  no  such  scruples — no   such   fears: 
whether  artisan,  bourgeois,  soldier,  or  noble,  he  is  master  of  all 
sciences — a  cyclopaedist;  and  is  as  ready  in  discourse  upon  ab- 
stract principles  as  upon  the  merits  of  an  actress.     Then,  the 
French  people,  at  the  time  of  the  breaking  out  of  the  revolution 
had  not  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  possessing  any  middle  ground 
between  the  sottish  absurdities  of  their  national  religion,  and  the 
wild  theories  of  their  atheistical  teachers.     They  had  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  be  devout  (in  the  sense  of  their  priests),  or  to  be  mad 
in  speculation.    And  as  they  had  no  reasonable  religion  whereon 
common  sense  might  exercise  itself,  so  neither  had  they  any  con- 
stitution which  might  save  them  from  the  extreme  of  the  old  regi- 
men on  the  one  side,  or  of  the  republican  delirium  on  the  other. 
Neither  in  religion  nor  politics  could  they  choose,  except  between 
the  faith  of  dotards  or  the  impudence  of  charlatans;  and  if  they 
scorned  to  doze  and  dream,  must  run  frantic  in  extravagance. 
Moreover,  the  revolution  brought  upon  the  stage  of  public  life  mul- 
titudes of  men  whose  habits  and  education  had  given  them  no  qual- 
ification whatever  for  the  transaction  of  the  practical  business  of 
government.  These,  if  they  would  figure  at  all,  must  do  so  as  phi- 
losophers.    For  it  is  a  much  easier  thing  to  talk  profoundly  as  a 
metaphysician,  than  wisely  to  reform  existing  institutions,  or  than 
to  carry  forward  the  every-day  business  of  state.     The  metaphy- 
sical fashion,  it  is  to  be  feared  has  not  yet  wrought  all  its  mis- 
chief in   France.     To  some   causes   of  a   similar  kind   may  be 
traced  much  of  that  want  of  good  sense  which  deforms  the  Ger- 
man philosophy  and  theology. 

Note  E.  p.  27. 

There  is  not  merely  a  natural  connection  between  despotism, 
and  mysticism,  and  fatalism,  and  atheism,  and  pantheism;  so  that 
it  shall  be  almost  invariably  true,  that  where  political  systems, 
like  those  of  Asia,  are  found,  we  shall  find  also,  among  the 
learned,  some  such  form  of  abstruse  and  absurd  philosophy;  but 
it,  is  the  scorching  heat  of  despotism  which  imparts  to  these  doc- 
trines their  power  of  mischief,  by  bringing  them  out  from  cells 
and  colleges,  into  the  markets,  and  fields,  and  homes  of  common 
life.  The  combined  influence  of  good  government  and  Chris- 
tianity, if  it  does  not  disperse  metaphysical  errors  altogether,  will 


133 


unfailingly  confine  them  to  the  closets  of  the  sophists  with  whom 
they  originate. 

Note  F.  p.  34. 

Every  one  is  aware  of  the  beneficial  tendency  of  genuine  sci- 
ence; but  it  is  not,  perhaps^  always  duly  remembered,  that  every 
practical  application  of  the  principles  of  mathematical ,  mechanical, 
chemical,  or  physiological  philosophy,  is  a  new  affirmation  of  the 
Divine  benevolence  towards  man.  Shall  we  say,  it  is  a  fresh 
text,  translated  from  the  unwritten  Bible  of  God's  creation,  cor- 
roborating our  faith  in  the  paternal  care  of  Him  in  whom  we  live, 
and  move  and  have  our  being?  And  this  might  be  said  even  if 
these  beneficial  discoveries  were  the  results  of  chance.  But  when 
they  come  to  us  as  the  product  of  laborious  intellectual  operations, 
they  assert  the  same  great  truth  with  a  peculiar  emphasis,  inas- 
much as  they  not  merely  declare  the  Divine  purpose — that  man 
should  be  well  accommodated,  and  aided,  and  comforted,  in  this 
his  terrene  abode;  but  that  he  should  win  every  advantage  by 
the  exertion  of  his  higher  faculties.  Each  benefit  derived  from  a 
better  knowledge  of  nature  is  a  premium  of  mind — a  boon  given 
as  the  reward  of  intellectual  effort:  and  while  it  declares  in  one 
of  its  inscriptions  that  the  Maker  of  the  universe  is  the  friend  of 
man,  in  the  other  it  exhorts  man  to  be  his  own  friend,  by  the 
diligent  employment  of  his  mental  powers. 

Every  branch  of  modern  science  abounds  with  instances  of 
remote  correspondences  between  the  great  system  of  the  world, 
and  the  welfare  of  man  in  the  artificial  {thetruly  natural)  condition 
to  which  knowledge  raises  him.  If  these  correspondences  were 
single  or  rare,  they  njight  be  deemed  merely  fortuitous;  like  the 
drifting  of  a  plank  athwart  the  track  of  one  who  is  swimming 
from  a  wreck.  But  when  they  meet  us  on  all  sides  and  invari- 
ably, we  must  be  resolute  in  atheism  not  to  confess  that  they  are 
emanations  from  one  and  the  same  centre  of  wisdom  and  goodness. 
Is  it  nothing  more  than  a  lucky  accommodation  which  makes  the 
polarity  of  the  needle  to  subserve  the  purposes  of  the  mar- 
iner.? Or  may  it  not  safely  be  affirmed,  both  that  the  magnetic 
influence  (whatever  its  primary  intention  may  be)  had  reference 
to  the  business  of  navigation — a  reference  incalculably  important 
to  the  spread  and  improvement  of  the  human  race;  and  that  the 


133 


discovery  and  the  application  of  this  influence  arrived  at  the  des- 
tined moment  in  the  revolution  of  human  affairs,  when,  in  com- 
bination with  other  events,  it  would  produce  the  greatest  effect? 
Nor  should  we  scruple  to  affirm,  tliat  the  relation  between  the 
inclination  of  the  earth's  axis  and  the  conspicuous  star  which, 
without  a  near  rival,  attracts  even  the  eye  of  the  vulgar,  and 
shews  the  north  to  the  wanderer  on  the  wilderness,  or  on  the 
ocean,  is  in  like  manner  a  beneficent  arrangement.  Those  who 
would  spurn  the  supposition  that  the  celestial  locality  of  a  sun, 
immeasurably  remote  from  our  system,  should  have  reference  to 
the  accommodation  of  the  inhabitants  of  a  planet  so  inconsider- 
able as  our  own,  forget  the  style  of  the  Divine  works,  which  is, 
to  secure  some  great  or  principal  end,  compatibly  with  ten 
thousand  lesser  and  remote  interests.  Man,  if  he  would  secure 
the  greater,  must  neglect  or  sacrifice  the  less:  not  so  the  Omni- 
potent Contriver.  It  is  a  fact  full  of  meaning,  that  those  astron- 
omical phenomena  (and  so  others)  which  offer  themselves  as 
available  for  the  purposes  of  art;  as,  for  instance,  of  navigation, 
or  geography;  do  not  fully  or  effectively  yield  the  aid  they 
promise,  until  after  long  and  elaborate  processes  or  calculations 
have  disentangled  them  from  variations,  disturbing  forces,  and 
apparent  irregularities.  To  the  rude  fact,  if  so  we  might  de- 
signate it,  a  mass  of  recondite  science  must  be  appended,  before 
it  can  be  brought  to  bear  with  precision  upon  the  arts  of  life. 
Thus,  the  polarity  of  the  needle,  or  the  eclipses  of  Jupiter's 
moons,  are  as  nothing  to  the  mariner,  or  the  geographer,  without 
the  voluminous  commentary  furnished  by  the  mathematics  of 
astronomy.  The  fact  of  the  expansive  force  of  steam  must  em- 
ploy the  intelligence  and  energy  of  the  mechanicians  of  an  em- 
pire, during  a  century,  before  the  whole  of  its  beneficial  powers 
can  be  put  in  activity.  Chemical,  medical,  and  botanical  science 
is  filled  with  parallel  instances;  and  they  all  affirm,  in  an  articu- 
late manner,  the  twofold  purpose  of  the  Creator — to  benefit  man, 
and  to  educate  him. 

Now,  in  the  metaphysical  dogmas  of  absolute  and  universal 
scepticism,  and  of  philosophical  fatalism,  there  is  a  conspicuous 
contrariety  to  the  testimony  of  all  other  sciences  in  both  these 
respects.  For  these  dogmas,  in  the  first  place,  represent  man  to 
be  the  helpless  victim  of  an  inexorable  power,  rather  than  the 

12 


134 


child  of  an  indulgent  parent;  and  then,  instead  of  courting  and 
cherishing  his  energies  and  his  intelligence,  they  paralyse  the 
one,  and  astound  the  other,  by  proving  to  him  that  his  toils  are 
idle — his  notions  of  truth  absurd  or  unfounded — his  convictions 
illusory — his  deductions  fallacious,  and  his  whole  nature  a  para- 
dox. If,  then,  this  order  of  metaphysics  claims  respect,  as  a 
science,  it  is  contradicted  by  sciences  better  established  than 
itself.  If  it  be  the  mere  reverie  of  a  debauched  intelligence,  then 
w^e  cheerfully  allow  it  all  the  honor  that  is  usually  thought  due 
to  meditations  of  that  quality. 

Note  G.  p.  37. 

The  entire  mass  of  intellectual  and  theological  philosophy 
divides  itself  into  two  classes,  the  one  irreconcilably  opposed  to 
the  other.  The  first  is,  in  its  spirit,  and  in  all  its  doctrines,  con- 
sentaneous with  human  feelings  and  interests.  The  second  is, 
both  as  a  whole,  and  in  its  several  parts,  paradoxical.  The  first 
is  Che  philosophy  of  modesty,  of  inquiry,  of  induction,  and  of 
belief.  The  second  is  the  philosophy  of  abstraction,  as  opposed 
to  induction;  and  of  impudence,  as  opposed  to  a  respectful  at- 
tention to  nature  and  to  evidence.  The  first  takes  natural  and 
mathematical  science  by  the  hand,  observes  the  same  methods, 
labors  to  promote  the  same  ends;  and  the  sisters  are  never  at 
variance.  The  second  stands,  ruffian-like,  upon  the  road  of 
knowledge,  and  denies  progress  to  the  human  mind.  The  first 
shews  an  interminable  and  practicable,  though  difficult  ascent. 
The  second  leads  to  the  brink  of  an  abyss,  into  which  reason  and 
hope  must  together  plunge.  The  first  is  grave,  laborious,  and 
productive.  The  second  ends  in  a  jest,  of  which  man,  and  the 
world,  and  its  Maker,  are  the  subject. 

The  paradoxical  philosophy,  though  always  the  same  in  prin- 
ciple, takes  its  style  from  the  manners  of  those  by  whom  it  is 
entertained.  In  Scotland  and  in  England  it  has  ordinarily  been 
decent,  specious,  veiled: — in  France,  bold,  explicit,  shameless. 
Hobbes,  indeed,  who  first  gave  to  England  a  philosophy  of  this 
order,  as  he  connected  himself  with  the  most  profligate  party  that 
has  ever  made  a  figure  upon  the  stage  of  English  affiiirs,  assumed 
a  tone  which  is  not  English:  as  a  writer  he  is  not  indigenous  to 


135 


our  literature.  Hume  had  a  better  tact,  and  knew  how  to  clothe 
the  same  inimical  philosophy  in  a  garb  of  elegance  and  of  sancti- 
monious modesty.  If  Hume  be  compared  with  Diderot,  Helve- 
tius,  and  their  school,  the  difference  between  England  and  France, 
at  that  time,  will  present  itself  to  the  eye.  The  sense  and  sub- 
stance are  the  same;  but  the  dialect  and  the  fashion  are  very 
dissimilar.  Tt  is  consolatory  to  find,  that  when  the  doctrines  of 
this  anti-human,  or  unnatural  philosophy,  are  to  be  prepared  for 
holding  intercourse  with  the  lower  classes  in  our  own  country, 
and  when  they  are  to  unclothe  themselves,  and  appear  horrid 
and  hirsute,  as  proper  savages,  it  is  necessary  to  bring  them  over 
from  France. 

The  very  same  distinction  runs  through  theology,  and  divides 
in  two,  some  of  those  religious  bodies  that,  in  name  and  political 
being,  are  one.  There  is  a  theology  which  takes  up'  the  consti- 
tution of  human  nature,  and  brings  to  bear  upon  it,  kindly  and 
consentaneously,  the  remedial  powers  of  Christianity.  And  there 
is  a  theology  which  makes  a  jest  of  human  nature,  which  insults 
its  woes,  denies  to  it  any  available  aid;  and  is,  if  it  must  be  called 
a  Gospel,  a  gospel  of  hostility  and  of  mockery.  The  sisterhood 
and  relationship  of  the  sceptical  or  atheistical  philosophy,  and  of 
the  Antinomian  theology,  might  be  traced  in  a  striking  similarity 
of  sentiment  and  expression;  and  not  a  few  passages  might  be 
taken  from  the  pages  of  the  most  licentious  of  the  French  infidel 
writers,  which,  with  the  substitution  of  here  and  there  a  phrase, 
would  seem  to  come  very  consistently  from  the  lips  of  certain 
notorious  divines.  If  there  be  any  important  difference  it  is,  that 
the  preacher  surpasses  his  brother  the  atheist  both  in  rancor  and 
in  impudence. 

Note  H.  p.  38. 

By  the  real  sciences,  those  are  intended  that  rest  upon  evi- 
dence which  secures  the  consent  of  all  who  are  competent  to 
comprehend  it;  and  which  therefore  excludes  sects  and  oppositions 
of  opinion.  If  Christianity  be  a  system  of  metaphysical  deduc- 
tions, it  must,  of  course,  maintain  itself  among  other  principles 
of  the  same  class;  and  must  bring  all  its  positions  into  accordance 
with  them;  or  must  vanquish  them  with  the  weapons  of  scholas- 


136 


tic  warfare,  and  must  appeal  to  abstract  truths  on  every  occasion 
of  controversy.  But  if  it  be  simply  and  solely  a  matter  of  his- 
tory (as  to  its  truth)  and  of  verbal  aflGirmation  (as  to  its  doctrines), 
then  nothing  can  be  more  enormous  than  the  attempt  to  bring 
the  general  fact,  or  the  particular  affirmations,  into  collision  with 
the  principles  of  metaphysical  science. 

Even  in  those  instances  in  which  one  science  bears  manifestly 
upon  another,  as,  for  instance,  chemistry  upon  vegetable  and 
animal  physiology;  or  where  a  yet  unformed  science  stands  be- 
tween two  that  are  more  advanced  than  itself:  as  geology  stands 
between  mechanical  and  astronomical  science  on  the  one  side, 
and  chemistry  on  the  other;  the  one  is  not  allowed  to  trample 
upon  the  other;  nor  is  it  permitted  that  the  infant  science  should 
be  oppressed  or  brow-beat  by  those  that  are  more  mature.  As, 
for  example: — astronomical  and  mechanical  calculations  may 
seem  to  demand  the  belief,  that  the  earth  is  a  hollow  sphere;  and 
chemical  science  may  appear  to  favor  the  same  supposition. 
Meanwhile,  the  geologist  is  allowed  to  collect  his  own  sort  of 
evidence,  bearing  upon  the  matter  of  fact,  and  to  pursue  his  own 
mode  of  reasoning  upon  the  probable  history  of  the  crust  of  the 
earth,  and  to  deduce  thence  his  conjectures,  without  being  intim- 
idated by  either  the  astronomical  calculation,  or  the  chemical 
theory:  and  in  whatever  result  his  inductions  may  issue,  that  re- 
sult would  never  be  scouted  because  not  easily  reconciled  with 
the  doctrine  derived  from  another  line  of  reasoning.  The  mod- 
esty of  true  philosophy  bequeaths  such  apparent  discordances  to 
the  sagacity  and  industry  of  a  future  age. 

The  reason  of  this  procedure  is  obvious. — An  inference  de- 
rived from  an  undoubted  fact  has  no  retrospective  efficiency  to 
invalidate  that  fact.  An  inference  drawn  from  one  fact  may  stand 
opposed  to  an  inference  resulting  from  another.  But  these  facts 
cannot  affect  each  other  circuitously  through  their  inferences,  as 
a  medium  of  communication;  for  this  were  to  give  to  them  such 
a  retrospective  power.  The  two  facts  stand  independently 
on  their  proper  evidence,  and  send  forth  their  branching  conse- 
quences irrespectively  of  each  other.  It  might  happen  that  some 
remote  consequence  of  the  truth  that  90  is  to  115,  as  18  to  23, 
might  seem  to  interfere  with  a  remote  consequence  from  the 
other  truth,  that  the  sum  of  the  squares  of  the  two  sides  is  equal 


137 

the  square  of  the  hypothenuse  of  a  right-angle  triangle.  But 
no  force  of  seeming  inconsistency  could  invest  such  a  conse- 
quence with  the  power  of  making  the  other  verity  untrue.  If  so, 
then  the  practice  of  reasoning  retrogressively,  through  infer- 
ences, from  fact  to  fact,  is  a  fallacious  practicej  and  one  which 
will  not  be  resorted  to  by  those  who  respect  the  principles  of  phi- 
losophical logic.  It  is  not  at  all  more  reasonable  to  have  recourse 
to  this  method  where  one  of  the  facts  is  more  certainly  known 
than  the  other,  than  it  is  in  those  cases  where  both  are  equally 
certain.  For  it  can  have  no  place  unless  this  less  clearly  known 
fact  is  first  assumed  to  be  false,  which  is  a   mere  petitio  principii. 

So  long  as  divines  continue,  in  opposition  to  the  methods  of  all 
true  science,  to  adjust  among  themselves  differences  of  interpre- 
tation, by  the  aid  of  abstract  principles,  they  cannot  complain 
when  atheists  reject  Christianity  altogether,  by  another  applica- 
tion of  the  same  sort  of  argument.  It  must  be  allowed  to  be  a 
legitimate  mode  of  reasoning  to  say — Certain  ancient  writings 
could  not  have  existed  in  the  age  of  Nero;  for  the  material  world 
affords  no  conclusive  evidence  of  having  sprung  from  an  intelli- 
gent Cause: — if  it  be  also  a  true  method  of  interpreting  those 
writings  to  control,  or  revise  the  grammatical  sense  of  words,  at  ^y 

the  demand  of  metaphysical  abstractions.     This  is  an  evil  too  old 
to  pass  away  in  a  day:  yet  must  it  p^ss  away:    and  the  tendency 
of  all  events  is  to  sweep  it,  ere  long,  into  the  ocean  of  things  for-        .   \  .  . 
gotten  or  contemned. 

Note  I.  p.  39. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  men  who,  in  the  second  and 
third  centuries,  came  over  to  the  church  from  schools  of  philoso- 
phy, or  schools  of  rhetoric,  should  forget  the  habits  of  mind  they 
had  acquired,  or  should  deny  the  fond  wish  to  conciliate  their  old 
philosophy  with  their  new  religion.  And  in  coming  among  the 
uninstructed  faithful,  it  was  natural  that  they  should  cherish  and 
employ  the  intellectual  advantage  they  possessed  over  their  new 
associates,  and  should  endeavor  to  shine  as  learned  expounders 
of  Christian  doctrine,  when  they  had  relinquished  the  honors  of 
secular  learning.  The  style  of  philosophical  exposition  which 
was  set  in  the  second  century,  has  only  changed  names,  and  mas- 


m 


138 


ters,  and  phrases,  from  that  time  to  this.  The  Reformers  did  indeed 
reject  both  Aristotle  and  the  Pope,  as  authorities  in  matters  of 
religion}  and  they  turned  with  a  sincere  and  manly  resolution  to 
the  inspired  writers,  as  the  only  teachers  of  doctrine.  But  they  did 
not  rid  themselves  (any  more  than  did  the  Platonic  fathers)  of 
the  intellectual  habits  which  their  education  had  given  them} 
and  while  they  looked  to  the  Scriptures  alone,  and  looked  to  them 
with  all  imaginable  reverence,  their  method  of  interpretation  was 
thoroughly  metaphysical; — their  rule  of  doctrinal  harmony  or 
consistency  was  drawn  from  the  logic  of  the  middle  ages;  and  the 
method  of  interpreting  Scripture,  as  Bacxm-laught  the  world  to 
interpret  nature,  entered  not  the  mind  of  one  of  them. 

The  Reformers  were  commanding  spirits,  and  they  effected 
the  greatest  revolution  in  human  affairs  that  the  world  has  wit- 
nessed. But  an  absolute  pause  has  since  ensued.  The  church 
has  seen,  indeed,  very  many  zealous  and  accomplished  divines; 
but  no  commanding  spirits,  from  the  age  of  Luther  and  Calvin 
to  the  present  day.  Interpretation  is  now  almost  what  they  lefl 
it.  Criticism  has  indeed  been  immensely  advanced,  and  the 
riches  of  erudition  have  been  accumulated  in  vast  masses  around 
7-t;^C  #N-*/  f  the  sacred  text.  But  every  interpreter  follows  his  predecessors 
/  Jr      I    in  the  wheel-way  of  his   denomination;  and  leaves  theology  too 

^'^^^  ■    \    much  what  natural  philosophy  was  at  the  time  of  the  publication 

*-  ^  ^y/9^  V  °^  ^^^  Novum  Organum.  It  is  imperfectly  or  dimly  seen,  that 
the  Bible  is  the  work  of  the  same  Hand  that  built  the  world, 
and  must  therefore  be  studied  in  the  same  method.    A 

History  is  never  so  instructive  as  when  single  and  special 
themes  are  pursued  through  the  course  of  ages.  It  is  much  to 
be  desired  that  a  history  of  Biblical  exposition  should  be  given  to 
the  church.  Not  a  history  of  criticism  and  erudition,  but  of 
principles  and  theological  philosophy.  It  should  have  its  com- 
mencement with  the  earliest  Jewish  expositors,  among  whom 
would  be  found  the  rudiments  of  all  the  abuses  that  have  since 
belonged  to  tlfis  department  of  intellectual  labor. 

Note  K.  p.  42. 

Hume  was  far  too  sagacious  not  to  perceive,  what  he  was  far 
too  astute  to  tell  his  reader,  that  his  argument  against  Christian- 


■    \    mi 


139 


'university! 


iilioES^ 


ity,  if  good  for  any  thing,  ought  to  pass  as  a  plough- 
struction  over  the  entire  field  of  human  affairs.  It  is  amazing 
that  so  much  importance  should  have  been  attached  to  so  puerile 
a  conceit — a  conceit  which,  if  divested  of  its  garb  of  philosophic 
gravity,  is  vapid  nonsense,  that  does  not  recommend  itself  even 
by  the  ingenuity  that  often  makes  a  foolish  sophism  amusing. 
And  yet  such  are  the  immunities  and  privileges  granted  to  any 
sort  of  sceptical  argument,  that  this  same  sophism,  refuted  a 
hundred  times,  is  still  respectfully  regarded  by  writers  of  repute. 
The  proper  answer,  or  at  least  a  sufficient  one,  has  very  recently 
been  given  (Edinburgh  Rev.  No.  104,  Art.  VI.)  to  a  new  expres- 
sion of  Hume's  quibble,  but  given  with  a  reserve  in  favor  of  in- 
fidelity, and  with  a  closing  insinuation  against  the  Christian  evi- 
dences, for  which  it  would  have  been  far  more  manly  to  have  sub- 
stituted a  candid  avowal  ot  unbelief.  The  author  of  the  book,  to 
which,  in  this,  and  another  instance,  (Second  preliminary  Dis- 
sertation, prefixed  to  the  7th  ed.  of  the  Encycl.  Brit.  p.  354)  an 
importance  is  given  that  must  have  been  founded  on  some  other 
reason  than  its  merits,  urges  the  argument  against  Christianity 
with  all  the  simplicity  of  one  who  has  never  been  reminded,  that 
it  presses,  with  equal  force,  upon  every  transaction  of  common 
life,  and  upon  all  the  methods  of  modern  science.  The  reason- 
ing of  Essay  III.  on  "the  fundamental  Principle  of  all  Evidence 
and  Expectation,"  if  sound,  disperses  with  a  breath  (to  take  one 
example  from  a  hundred)  the  inodern  chemistry;  for  it  not  only 
proves  it  to  be  absurd  to  receive  the  testimony  of  experimenters 
who  describe  any  other  combination  of  substances  than  those  we 
have  personally  observed,  but  it  forbids  a  man  to  believe  even  the 
evidence  of  his  own  senses,  when  a  new  phenomenon  meets 
him!  Is  this  'ph'doso2)hy? ,  if  not,  what  epithet  shall  we  bestow 
upowit.''  In  every  case  of  a  deviation  from  that  order  of  events 
which  hitherto  we  have  observed,  instead  of  either  questioning 
the  evidence  of  our  senses,  or  resolutely  refusing  to  receive  good 
and  abundant  testimony,  and  instead  of  supposing  that  a  dissolu- 
tion of  the  connection  of  cause  and  efiect  has  happened,  we  sim- 
ply presume  that  some  new  and  unknown  cause  has  come  in  to 
disturb  the  usual  course  of  events.  This  presumption  is  the  very 
instrument  of  all  discovery  in  experimental  philosophy.  Every 
new,  or  unexpected,  or  inexplicable  appearance,  (and  such  are  of 


HO 


very  frequent  occurrence  in  a  course  of  chemical  experiment) 
suggests  the  conviction  that  an  unknown  cause  is  present:  then 
follows  the  hypothesis  which  is  to  guide  the  way  in  making  fresh 
experiments,  with  the  view  of  detecting  the  hidden  power.  Now 
this  process  is  not  merely  abstractedly  reasonable,  but  has  been 
abundantly  authenticated  by  the  actual  results  of  such  processes. 

If  such  a  case  may  at  all  be  supposed  as  that  adduced  by  the 
author  of  these  Essays — namely,  the  testimony  of  many  credible 
witnesses  to  the  fact,  that  a  cubic  inch  of  ice  remained  undis- 
solved when  exposed  to  the  heat  of  a  furnace;  instead  of  taking 
the  course  which  he  recommends — that  of  rejecting,  'by  a  vio- 
lence upon  our  own  convictions,  the  testimony  of  a  hundred  com- 
petent and  unexceptionable  witnesses,  we,  in  the  spirit  of  true  phi- 
losophy, should  first  accept  the  fact  so  attested  as  indubitable;  and 
should  then  confidently  presume — not  that  Nature  had  forgotten 
her  laws  in  that  instance,  bat  that  some  extraordinary  cause  was 
present  to  intercept  the  operation  of  heat  upon  ice.  With  the 
hope  of  discovering  this  extraordinary  agent,  we  •  should  rigidly 
examine  all  the  circumstances  of  the  experiment, — should  frame 
every  conceivable  hypothesis,  and  should  put  each  in  turn  to  the 
test;  and  if  after  all  we  failed  in  our  endeavors,  should  simply 
record  the  fact  as  unexplained,  and  bequeath  it  to  the  next  age, 
when  perhaps  a  perfected  philosophy  may  clear  up  this,  and  many 
other  difficulties. . 

But  now  let  it  be  supposed,  that  the  hundred  competent  per- 
sons who  have  affirmed  that,  in  their  presence,  ice  remained  un- 
dissolved in  a  furnace,  were  to  explain  the  matter,  by  saying  that 
the  water,  before  its  congelation,  had  been  impregnated  with  a 
newly-discovered  chemical  agent,  which  had  the  property  of  con- 
verting water  into  an  indissoluble  crystal.  If  this  affirmation  be 
also  properly  attested,  then,  what  inconsistency  remains?-!-none; 
except  on  the  part  of  the  sceptic,  who  had  declared,  in  the  true 
style  of  ignorance,  that,  "nobody  should  make  him  believe  what 
he  had  not  seen  with  his  own  eyes." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  apply  the  argument  to  the  case  of 
the  Christian  miracles.  The  author  of  these  Essays  admits,  page 
268,  that  our  involuntary  belief  of  the  uniformity  of  causation, 
compels  us  to  suppose  that  "the  admirable  appearances  of  design" 
exhibited  by  the  material  world,  have  been  the  production  of  an 


141 


''intelligent  cause;"  and  that  this  cause  is  "wise  and  benevolent." 
Here,  then,  he  affirms  and  alleges  the  presence  of  a  cause  suffi- 
cient, and  strictly  proper,  for  the  production  of  the  unusual  ef- 
fects spoken  of  by  the  witnesses.  It  is,  therefore,  no  longer  ne- 
cessary either  to  suppose  an  interruption  of  the  principle  of  caus- 
ation, or  to  stand  aghast,  as  he  would  have  us,  between  two 
incompatible  proofs;  for  tJie  witnesses,  whose  veracity  is  granted 
(p.  262)  to  be  established  on  the  ordinary  principles  of  human 
nature,  not  only  affirm  the  occurrence  of  the  unusual  event,  but 
affirm  it  in  a  connection  that  renders  the  entire  testimony  intel- 
ligible and  rational.  They  declare  that,  to  authenticate  the  doc- 
trine of  a  future  life,  He  who  is  the  author  of  life  opened  the 
eyes  of  one  born  blind;  and  is  not  this  proposition  as  reasonable, 
abstractedly,  as  the  other  proposition,  "that  God  formed  the  eye 
to  see.?"  On  occasion  of  meeting  with  such  an  affirmation,  the 
only  question  we  have  to  do  with,  concerns  the  credibility  of  the 
witnesses.'  It  is  already  admitted,  that  the  same  wise  and  be- 
nevolent Being  who  gives  sight  to  the  million  at  birth,  may,  if  he 
pleases,  afterwards  grant  it  to  the  one  who  received  it  not  then. 
"Has  he  so  pleased.''"  this  is  the  single  doubt;  and  it  is  to  be  re- 
solved by  application  of  the  established  rules  of  historical  evi- 
dence. 

NoTK  L.   p.  43. 

To  affirm  that  the  doctrine  of  materialism  is  innoxious,  or  at 
least,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  indifference  to  religion,  may  startle 
some  readers.  The  assertion  is  advanced  with  a  subjoined  con- 
dition. A  philosophical  system  may  have  an  inherent  and  insep- 
arable, or  an  accidental  and  relative  mischievous  tendency:  that 
is  to  say,  it  may  be  directly  hostile  to  the  great  principles  of 
morals  and  religion,  so  as  to  be  susceptible  of  no  modification  or 
accommodation  which  can  render  it  consistent  with  those  prin- 
ciples; or  it  may  produce  ill  consequences  solely  by  some  misin- 
terpretation, or  unfounded  inference;  or  by  clashing  with  some 
existing  popular  prejudice.  Thus,  for  example,  the  doctrine  of 
necessity,  as  advanced  by  Diderot;  and  that  of  causation,  as  ap- 
plied to  testimony,  by  Hume;  can,  neither  of  them,  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  principles  of  religion,  any  more  than  with  other 


142 


parts  of  the  economy  of  human  life.  They  are  intrinsically  in- 
imical to  man,  and  might  safely  be  rejected,  unexamined,  simply 
because  they  stand  in  contrariety  to  all  the  sciences,  as  well  as 
to  the  constitution  and  universal  sentiments  of  human  nature. 

But  a  system,  such  as  the  idealism  of  Berkeley,  which  leaves 
all  relations  and  sentiments,  just  what  it  found  them,  and  is  in  fact 
a  pure  theory,  without  inference,  cannot  be  affirmed  to  have  any 
intrinsic  quality  hostile  to  the  principles  of  morality  or  religion. 
Nevertheless,  it  may  happen  that,  among  those  who  must  under- 
stand whatever  they  hear  in  a  gross  sense,  the  doctrine  that  noth- 
ing exists,  or  can  exist,  but  mind,  might  produce  some  danger- 
ous perplexity.  This  ill  consequence  is  clearly  accidental,  and 
an  equal  inconvenience  might  happen  to  result  from  the  best 
established  truths.  Or,  to  take  another  instance: — an  inference 
unfavorable  to  revealed  religion  has  been  hastily  derived  by  its 
enemies,  from  some  facts  of  geological  science;  and  the  ground- 
less fears  of  the  friends  of  religion  have  encouraged  the  ill  inten- 
tions of  infidels.  But  in  these  cases  all  the  mischief  has  arisen 
either  from  a  misunderstanding  of  the  facts,  or  from  an  unwar- 
rantable deduction  of  consequences. 

Now  the  case  is  parallel  in  the  instance  of  the  doctrine  of  ma- 
terialism. It  may  become  pernicious  by  a  popular  misinterpreta- 
tion, or  by  a  malignant  and  sophistical  comment,  framed  by  those 
who  are  ever  ready  to  take  bad  advantage  of  the  ignorance  of  the 
multitude.  But  in  its  essence,  this  doctrine,  false  as  it  is,  stands 
precisely  on  a  level  with  its  antagonist,  idealism,  and  leaves  all 
questions  of  morality  and  religion  just  what  and  where  they 
were.  The  question  concerning  the  materiality  or  spirituality  of 
mind,  resolves  itself  into  a  futile  inquiry  concerning  the  inner 
form  of  substances  (JVovum  Organum)  which  is  always  indiffer- 
ent, both  to  theory  and  to  practice.  Whether  heat  be  a  diffused 
substance,  or  a  mode  of  movement;  an  emanation  or  a  vibration; 
is  unimportant  both  to  science  and  to  art.  Such  is  the  question 
concerning  the  occult  constitution  of  thought; — a  question  never 
to  be  determined,  but  one  which  might  be  determined  in  this  man- 
ner or  in  that,  without  in  the  remotest  degree  affecting  (except  by 
vulgar  prejudice)  the  doctrines  of  the  immortality  and  future 
responsibiHty  of  man — doctrines  which  rest  on  far  efurer  grounds 
than  that  of  metaphysical  demonstration. 


143 

Note  M.  p.  44. 

The  supernatural  reaches  us  in  the  Scriptures  not  supernatur- 
ally,  but  precisely  in  the  same  way  in  which  all  other  matters, 
conveyed  by  document,  reach  the  parties  interested.  B  holds  a 
reversionary  claim  to  a  title  and  estate  by  possession  of  parch- 
ments, tlie  authenticity  of  which  he  can  satisfactorily  establish. 
C  holds  an  interest  in  the  future  life,  also  by  writings,  the  va- 
lidity of  which  he  can  prove.  The  subject  matter  of  the  two  deeds 
or  testaments  affects  not  at  all  the  mode  of  conveyance;  and  if 
the  claims  of  B  and  C  are  severally  called  in  question,  both  must 
defend  their  pretensions  by  the  same  process  of  argument;  or,  if 
any  abstract  principle  can  be  adduced  which  would  destroy,  a 
priori,  the  heavenly  expectations  of  C,  it  must  at  the  same  time 
annihilate  the  secular  hopes  of  B. 

All   the  difficulty  in   the   argument  for   Christianity  proceeds  •         ' 

from  the  refual  of  the  opponent  to  abide  by  the  established  condi-  <//   ^  r 

tions  of  documentary  proof.  This  difficulty  has  been  immeasur- 
ably enhanced  by  that  fatal  alliance  between  metaphysics  and 
religion,  which  theologians  have  encouraged — "  et  zelum  reli- 
gionis  ciecum  et  immoderaturn." — JVov.  Organum. 

Note  N.  p.  46.       ^  / 

The  rude  and  laborious  mechanical  or  chemical  processes  which 
are  carried  on  among  a  people  destitute  of  physical  science,  may 
be  regarded  as  standing  parallel  with  those  conventional  maxims 
of  morality,  and  those  imperfect  social  institutions,  which  exist 
among  the  same  nations,  if  not  yet  visited  by  revealed  religion. 
Now,  previously  to  the  introduction  of  physical  science  among 
such  a  rude  people,  the  question  might  be  started  by  them, 
Whether  the  new  principles  may  not  be  expected  to  impede, 
baffle,  and  subvert,  the  existing  arts?  To  this  question  it  might 
be  replied.  That  the  existing  arts  are  nothing  but  science  in  a 
broken  or  unconnected  form:  that  is  to  say,  single  inferences 
from  single  facts,  accidentally  discovered;  and  that,  therefore, 
when  the  entire  course  of  nature,  of  which  these  facts  are  insu- 
lated parts,  is  known,  the  practical  inferences  must  be  more  in 
number,  and  more  consistent  one  with  another.  In  other  words, 
that  the  result  of  an  extended  knowledge  of  nature  must  be  ben- 
eficial, because  even  a  partial  knowledge  of  it  is  so. 


144 


The  reply  would  be  the  same  to  a  question  concerning  the  util- 
ity of  moral,  or,  we  should  say,  Divine  science.  The  uninformed 
sentiments  of  mankind  lead  them  to  establish  certain  social 
usages,  which  are  found  to  be  beneficial,  and  indeed  necessary. 
It  may  therefore  be  safely  inferred,  that  a  more  extended  or  more 
exact  knowledge  of  the  moral  nature  of  man,  such  a  knowledge 
as  Christianity  imparts,  will  lead  to  better  institutions,  and  will 
suggest  better  rules  of  conduct.  Now,  for  the  same  reason  that 
an  uninformed  people  ought  to  reject  a  pretended  system  of  phys- 
ical science  which,  instead  of  aiding  their  agriculture  or  their 
manufactures,  brought  their  whole  industry  to  a  stand;  so  might 
they  properly  reject  a  moral  philosophy  which,  instead  of  favor- 
ing the  existing  good  principles  of  the  people,  asserted  the  ab- 
surdity of  all  moral  sentiments,  and  told  the  multitude  that  there 
are  no  actions  that  merit  either  praise  or  blame.  Such  a  philo- 
sophy rests  on  the  principle,  that  nature  and  man  are  at  vari- 
ance; but  physical  science  proves  the  contrary;  and  never  makes 
a  discovery  which  does  not  a-new  declare  that  nature  is  his 
friend. 

Note  O.  p.  48. 

The  author  would  not  be  thought  ignorant  of  the  ''Essay  on 
the  Equity  of  Divine  Government,  and  the  Sovereignty  of  Divine 
Grace,"  or  unwilling  to  acknowledge  the  great  and  perhaps  un- 
rivalled merit  of  the  late  Dr.  Edward  Williams:  he  cordially  joins 
in  the  praise  which  a  philosophic  minority  within  the  religious 
world  has  bestowed  upon  that  able  and  amiable  divine.  But 
whatever  his  merits  may  be,  as  a  profound  and  calm  thinker,  it 
will  hardly  be  affirmed  that  he  has  been  much  more  successful 
than  was  his  predecessor  and  father,  President  Edwards,  in  his 
endeavors  to  destroy  the  Biblical  difference  between  Calvinists 
and  Arminians,  by  metaphysical  distinctions.  The  Scriptural 
system  of  Dr.  Williams  may  be  more  consistent  than  the  Scrip- 
tural system  of  his  opponents:  and  again,  his  philosophy  is  cer- 
tainly belter  than  theirs.  But  has  he  brought  philosophy  to  bear 
upon  the  Religion  of  Texts,  in  any  such  manner  as,  by  its 
conspicuous  success,  to  recommend  that  method  of  argument? 
Some,  whose  opinions  are  entitled  to  much  respect,  would  reply 
in  the  affirmative;  and  many  would  reply  in  the  negative,  whose 


145 


opinions,  on  matters  of  abstruse  thought,  are  entitled  to  very 
little.  The  reader  may  gather  the  writer's  opinion,  that  the  at- 
tempt to  decide  matters  of  Christian  doctrine  by  abstract  demon- 
stration, has  not  been  placed  in  a  decidedly  more  auspicious  light 
than  before,  hy  the  ''Essay  on  Equity  and  Sovereignty."  It  may, 
nevertheless,  be  true,  that  that  Essay  occupies  a  very  high  place 
of  merit  in  the  circle  of  modern  theological  literature. 

The  author  must  here  beg  to  be  excused  from  making  any 
explicit  reference  to  some  highly  reputed  modern  writers  on  the 
Arminian  side  of  the  controversy,  of  whom  he  could  not  speak 
favorably  as  masters  of  intellectual  science:  and  it  comes  not 
within  his  province  either  to  praise  or  blame  them  as  expounders 
ofScripture. 

Note  P.  p.  48. 

The  limits  of  a  note  would  be  insufficient  properly  to  explain 
to  those  who  may  not  hitherto  have  given  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject,, that  remarkable  condition  of  all  the  Divine  operations 
which  makes  them  subserve,  by  one  and  the  same  constitutioii  of 
parts,  or  succession,  of  causes  and  effects,  two,  three,  or  more,  in- 
dependent purposes.  No  single  ttirm  has,  as  yet,  been  authenti- 
cated by  the  usage  of  philosophical  writers  whereby  this  admi- 
rable complexity  and  simplicity  may  be  designated.  And,  in- 
deed, the  subject  altogether  has  received  less  attention  than  it 
deserves.  Nevertheless  every  one  knows  that  the  material  world 
abounds  with  instances  of  this  sort, — or,  to  speak  more  properly, 
that  the  whole  system  of  nature  is  a  complex  simplicity, — a  ma- 
chinery which,  with  one  set  of  powers  and  parts,  and  one  contin- 
uous movement,  accomplishes  a  great  variety  of  ends;  and  yet 
in  such  manner  that  the  entire  machinery  is  specifically  proper 
to  each  of  those  purposes. 

The  same  admirable  principle  presents  itself  again  to  notice  in 
that  highly  complicated  system  of  which  man  and  his  agency  is 
the  subject;  and  it  can  be  in  no  other  way  than  by  an  illustration 
of  this  principle,  that  the  doctrine  of  Providence  can  be  placed 
in  the  light,  or  freed  from  urgent  difficulties.  The  Divine  oper- 
ations shew  always  the  same  character;  and  the  Bible  therefore, 
because  it  is  the  work  of  God,  is  in  this  respect  also  in  analogy 
with  nature  and  providence. — ''Id  etiam  in  omni  majors  opere 

13 


146 


ProvidentisB  evenire  reperitur;  ut  omnia  sine  strepitu  et  sonitu 
placide  labantur;  atque  res  plane  agatur,  priusquam  homines 
earn  agi  patent  aut  advertent." — Bacon. 

Note  Q.  p.  49. 

It  is  a  matter  of  some  importance  to  understand  that  relative 
imperfection,  and  consequent  uncertainty,  of  intellectual  philo- 
sophy, in  all  its  branches,  which  results  from  the  vagueness  and 
variableness  of  its  signs  or  terms.  The  closeness  of  the  con- 
nection between  theory  and  practice,  science  and  art,  will  be 
found  always  to  bear  proportion,  not  so  much  to  the  comprehen- 
siveness or  symmetrical  perfection  of  the  former,  as  to  its  precision 
and  its  fixedness.  But  precision  and  fixedness  can  be  secured  only 
by  a  rigorously  exact  system  of  notation^  or,  in  the  experimen- 
tal sciences,  by  an  invariable  and  intelligible  nomenclature.  This 
high  advantage  is  enjoyed  in  the  most  absolute  degree  by  the 
mathematical  sciences:  hence  it  is  that  the  connection  or  corres- 
pondence between  the  higher  mathematics  and  those  arts  of  life 
which  are  dependent  upon  them,  is  liable  to  no  hesitation  or 
dispute. 

But  let  it  be  supposed  (if  indeed  such  a  supposition  can  be  en- 
tertained) that  mathematical  truths  were  deprived  of  their  means 
of  definite  expression,  and  could  only  be  made  known  in  the 
mode  of  a  loose  and  changeable  description.  In  this  case  the 
practical  or  available  value  of  these  truths  would  be  so  much 
lowered,  that  occasions  would  often  arise  wherein  the  vulgar 
rules — the  nostrums  of  workmanlike  skill  and  artisan  experi- 
ence, would  be  safer  guides  than  those  high  truths;  and  it  would 
be  better  that  practical  men  should  grope  their  way  in  the  clumsy 
methods  of  manual  dextetity,  than  trust  themselves  to  the  di- 
rection of  science.  This  never  actually  happens,  because  math- 
ematical science  is  rigorously  exact  in  its  terms,  and  invariable 
in  its  expressions. 

Yet  this  low  relative  value,  or  available  significance,  of  scien- 
tific principles,  is  always  the  disadvantage  of  intellectual  philo- 
sophy; and  hence  it  hardly  ever  comes  forward  to  direct  or  con- 
trol the  business  of  life,  without  bringing  with  it  an  equal  chance 
of  deranging,  confusing,  or  misdirecting  the  existing  course  of 
practice.    Or,  to  state  the   same   thing  in  other  terms,  so  as  to 


147 

place  it  in  direct  contrast  with  mathematical  science: — The  value 
of  the  principles  of  intellectual  philosophy  is  so  much  depreciated 
by  the  vagueness  of  its  signs,  that  it  can  barely  maintain  equality 
with  (in  fact  is  much  inferior  to)  the  vulgar  or  popular  axioms, 
and  maxims,  and  modes  of  procedure,  which  have  grown  out  of 
the  common  sense  and  experience  of  mankind.  In  all  practical 
questions,  therefore,  it  is  at  least  as  safe  to  abide  by  those  com- 
mon principle.-?,  as  to  follow  the  instructions  of  science.  The 
practical  man,  the  statesman,  the  teacher,  and  the  divine,  should 
do  what  the  artisan  ought  to  do,  if  mathematical  science  had  no 
precise  language,  that  is — listen  much  more  to  experience  and 
common  sense  than  to  philosophy. 

It  follows  from  the   incurable  imperfection  of  intellectual  sci- 
ence, that  when  a  pretended  demonstration,  derived  from  it,  chal- 
lenges a  right  to  disturb  or  overrule  any  existing  order  of  things, 
which  rests  upon  the  basis   of  experience  or  known   facts,  the 
good  sense  of  mankind  should  send  it  home  to  the  closet  of  the 
speculatist  whence  it  issued.     And  now,  if  it  were  asked,  in  what 
relation  the  principles  of  intellectual  philosophy  stand  to  the  affir- 
mations of  our  documentary  religion; — we  should  find  an  answer 
by  recurring  to  the  supposition,  that  the   mathematical  sciences 
possessed  no  definite  or  invariable  signs,  and  could  only  express 
themselves  in  the  language   of  vague  description;  and   should 
then,  moreover,  suppose  that  a  super-human  intelligence,  which 
had  at  command  the  entire  compass  of  these  sciences  in  a  definite 
form,  were  to  confer  upon  the  mechanic  arts  a  centenary  of  pre-  .   i,  -         ^J — 
else,  though  unconnected  rules  of  practice,  drawn  from  that  ab-  \    '    ^^     W4-tf 
solute  science.     In  such  a  case,  it  would  plainly  be  the  wisdom/  ,     ''^T'TCi*-,' • 
of  artisans  and  practical  men,  rigidly  to  adhere,  on  all  occasions,    '**•  ^<^J  ai 
to  the  hundred  rules.    Nor  could  any  thing  be  more  unreasonable      i*-*^,**,/ 
than  to  stand  hesitating  between  one  of  these  definite  rules,  and        .lT/./I^X^  , 
some  vague  dogma  of  that  unfixed  science,  which,  having  no      ^?Lg^^    > 
determinate  medium  of  expression,  could  reach  no  certain  con- 
clusions, and  must  always  lie  open  to  immense   miscalculations. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  apply  our  illustration  to  the  case  of  the  re-  ' 

lation  between  metaphysical  science  and  Christianity.  But  if  the 
reader  thinks  that  the  disadvantage  of  the  former  has  here  been 
too  strongly  stated,  his  attentionis  directed  to  some  confessions  on 
this  subject  drawn  from    unquestionable  authorities. — "At  verba 


148 


ex  captu  vulgi  imponuntur.  Itaque  mala  et  inepta  verborum 
impositio,  miris  modis  intellectum  obsidit.  Neque  definitiones 
aut  explicationes,  quibas  homines  docti  se  munire  et  vindicare  in 
nonuullis  consueverunt,  rem  ullo  modo  restituant,  Sed  verba 
plane  vim  faciunt  intellectui,  et  omnia  turbant;  et  homines  ad 
inanes  et  innumeras  controversias  et  commenta  deducunt." — 
Again:  "Credunt  homines  rationem  suam  verbis  imperare;  sed 
fit  etiam  ut  verba  vim  suam  super  intellectum  retorquant  et 
reflectant;  quod  philosophiam  et  scientias  reddidit  sophisticas  et 
inactivas." — JVov.  Organ.  Aph.  43  et  59. 

Locke  has  enlarged  upon  the  imperfection  of  words,  with  great 
force  and  fulness,  in  many  parts  of  his  Essay  on  Human  Under- 
standing: the  reader  hardly  needs  to  be  referred  to  the  particular 
passages:  he  will  doubtless  call  to  mind  the  ninth  chapter  of  the 
third  book.  Leibnitz  speaks  to  the  same  effect.  Reid  says:  "The 
language  of  philosophers,  with  regard  to  the  original  faculties  of 
the  mind,  is  so  adapted  to  the  prevailing  system,  that  it  cannot 
fit  any  otherj  like  a  coat  that  fits  the  man  for  whom  it  was  made, 
and  shews  him  to  advantage,  which  yet  will  sit  very  awkwardly 
upon  one  of  a  different  make,  although  perhaps  as  handsome,  and 
as  well  proportioned.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  make  any  innova- 
tion in  our  philosophy  concerning  the  mind  and  its  operations, 
without  using  new  words  and  phrases,  or  giving  a  different  mean- 
ing to  those  that  are  received." — Inquiry,  chap.  i.  sect.  2. 

Dugald  Stewart  professes,  more  than  once,  his  indistinct  hope, 
that  the  project  of  a  philosophical  language  might  be  realised,  in 
order  to  obviate  the  inconveniences  that  arise  from  the  use  of  an 
instrument  of  thought  which  was  constructed  by  the  vulgar,  and 
with  no  view  to  the  purposes  of  science.  See  Elements,  chap, 
iv.  sect.  4.     See  also  chap.  vii.  sect.  2.  p.  495.  3d  edition. 

"And  here  I  cannot  help  pausing  a  little,"  says  the  same  ele- 
gant writer,  "to  remark  hotc  much  more  imperfect  language  is  than 
is  commonly  supposed,  as  an  organ  of  mental  intercourse." — Phi- 
losophical Essays,  p.  207,  3d  edition. 

But,  perhaps,  this  great  and  incurable  disadvantage  has  never 
been  more  forcibly  represented  than  by  a  distinguished  living 
writer,  who  so  strongly  stales  the  difficulty  with  which  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  philosopher  has  to  contend,  that  the  reader 
would  be  almost  justified  in  at  once  withdrawing  his  attention 


149 


from  a  science  which,  by  the  confession  of  so  competent  a  mas- 
ter, can  never  become  scientific.  See  the  Introduction  to  the 
Dissertation  on  the  Progress  of  Ethical  Philosophy,  by  Sir  James 
Mackintosh,  prefixed  to  the  7th  ed.  of  the  Encyc.  Brit. 

Note  R.  p.  54. 

That  want  of  a  precise  and  invariable  notation,  adverted  to  in 
the  last  note,  v^hich  has  hitherto,  and  which  must,  perhaps, 
always  rest  as  a  capital  disadvantage  upon  metaphysical  science, 
and  deprive  it  of  almost  all  direct  utility^  need  not  impede  the 
progress  of  the  physiology  of  the  human  mind;  if  this  latter 
science  were  entirely  severed  from  the  former.  For  a  knowledge 
of  nature,  in  any  department,  may  be  conveyed  in  a  descriptive 
form,  to  which  an  absolute  precision  of  terms  is  not  essential. 

A  science  may  properly  be  said  to  have  passed  its  period  of 
infancy,  or  to  have  reached  a  degree  of  maturity,  when  the  ex- 
istence of  sects  and  oppositions  within  its  precincts  is  no  longer 
possible; — or  when  its  first  principles,  or  its  more  important  de- 
ductions, are  no  longer  liable  to  be  called  in  question  by  well- 
informed  men.  Thus,  it  may  safely  be  said,  that  though  mathe- 
matical, astronomical,  mechanical,  and  physical  science,  may 
hereafter  receive  important  additions,  they  have  attained  their 
maturity,  and  will  not  again  be  utterly  subverted.  Chemistry  is 
reaching,  or  has  reached,  this  maturity.  Quite  so  much  must 
not  be  affirmed  of  Geology.  Political  Economy  stands  perhaps 
on  the  same  stage  of  hopeful  growth.  Far  below  it  rests  that 
system  of  quackery  (founded,  nevertheless,  on  real  and  important 
facts)  to  which  the  improper  term  phrenology  has  been  assigned. 
If  the  phase  infancy  is  thought  to  be  unseemingly  applied  to  a 
science  so  ancient  as  metaphysics,  the  author  can  think  of  none 
other  that  would  be  appropriate,  unless  the  analagous  word 
dotage  were  admitted  in  lieu  of  it. 

Note  S.  p.  58. 

If  the  author  were  called  upon  to  justify  his  assertion,  that  the 
modern  philosophy  of  the  human  mind  is,  for  the  most  part,  a 
mere  system  of  abstractions,  he  would  think  it  enough  to  appeal 
*13 


160 


to  that  anxious  trimming  of  phrases,  which  characterises  all  the 
more  substantial  portions  of  Brown's  Lectures,  and  which  belongs 
not  less  to  the  argument  of  later  writers  who  have  disputed  hi» 
positions.  The  assertion  is  confidently  advanced,  that  no  branch 
of  physics,  whatever  be  its  subject,  demands  this  solicitoua 
nicety,  or  will  be  promoted  by  the  use  of  it. 

Note  T.  p.  61.- 

The  reader  need  not  be  reminded,  that  the  application  of  the 
word  instinct  comprehensively,  and  without  distinction,  to  all 
the  actions  of  the  brute  orders,  is  a  popular  impropriety.  One 
might  as  well  call  all  the  actions  of  man  rational,  as  all  those  of 
the  inferior  tribes  instinctive.  When  an  animal  acts  in  a  manner 
which  differs  in  no  essential  circumstance  from  a  corresponding 
action  in  man,  a  delusion  must  be  engendered  by  applying  to  the 
two  actions  different  terms.  j3  and  B  are  transacting  business 
together,  and  behave  very  much  in  the  same  manner.  But  -4 
has  far  more  intelligence,  and  more  learning,  and  more  virtue, 
than  B.  Shall  we  therefore  say  that  A  acts  and  speaks  rationally, 
and  B  instinctively?  This  were  to  introduce  a  distinction  which 
belongs  not  to  the  real  points  of  difference.  We  should  confine 
the  word  instinct  to  those  instances  in  which  a  course  rational, 
as  to  its  end,  is  pursued  by  a  voluntary  agent,  under  circum- 
stances which  forbid  tiie  supposition  that  it  springs  from  a  per- 
ception or  calculation  of  the  connection  of  means  and  end.  The 
instance  usually  adduced,  that  of  the  construction  of  the  honey- 
comb, is  one  of  the  most  proper  that  can  be  named,  especially 
because  it  involves  somie  of  the  highest  and  most  abstruse  prin- 
ciples of  geometry. 

Though  man  also  has  his  instincts,  as  they  are  not  of  the  sort 
which  supply  the  want  of  reason  (which  he  possesses),  they 
afibrd  him  little  aid  in  interpreting  those  operations  by  which,  in 
animals,  reason  is  anticipated  or  supplanted.  Philosophical  wri- 
ters must  be  understood  to  use  the  words  reason  and  instinct  in 
a  popular  sense,  when  attributing  the  one  to  man  as  his  preroga- 
tive, and  the  other  to  the  brute  as  its  blind  faculty.  The  terms 
reason  and  instinct  thus  vaguely  used,  mean — more  reason,  and 
less  reason.     "Bruto,  guamvis  ratione  et  lihcrtatc  destituto,"  saya. 


V^       or  THE 

151 


cum  id  ad  correcKoircnt  djtis  quid 
confere  posse  judicamus;  sic  canes  et  equi  mulctantur,  idque 
felici  cum  successu."  But  if  the  brute  were  altogether  destitute 
of  reason  and  liberty,  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  bee  is  desti- 
tute of  both  in  building  her  cells,  rewards  and  punishments, 
could  have  no  operation  or  efficiency. 

Note  U.  p.  65. 

The  precise  term  employed  to  designate  the  incessant  activity 
of  mind,  or  the  constant  succession  of  thoughts,  is  of  very  little 
or  no  importance  to  physiology.  Those  phrases  which  have  been 
the  subject  of  so  much  debate  among  modern  writers,  take  their 
sense  and  propriety  from  the  particular  doctrine  that  is  enter- 
tained relative  to  the  law  or  laws  that  regulate  the  succession  of 
mental  states.  The  term  that  is  chosen  must  depend  upon  the 
answer  given  to  the  question — What  is  the  connecting  principle 
that  makes  one  thought  or  emotion,  rather  than  another,  succeed 
to  the  one  w^hich  last  occupied  the  mind?  The  fact  of  an  inces- 
sant succession  of  thoughts,  is  independent  of  such  inquiries; 
and  no  one  who  attentively  observes  the  manners  of  any  active 
animal,  can  doubt  that  this  constant  movement  belongs  as  well 
to  the  brute  as  to  the  human  mind. 

Note  W.  p.  C7. 

It  has  been  related,  that  a  horse,  pinched  in  shoeing,  and 
turned  out  to  field,  has  made  his  way,  by  leaping  several  fences, 
to  the  farrier's  shop,  and  there  presented  the  uneasy  foot  to  the 
careless  artist,  who  had  so  negligently  exercised  his  craft.  This, 
if  true,  is  something  more  than  association  of  ideas;  for  that 
principle  would  have  led  the  nag  any  where  rather  than  to  the 
shop  where  he  had  recently  been  so  ill  treated.  Ponies  that 
have  been  long  upon  the  same  farm,  not  unfrequently  acquire  so 
high  a  degree  of  dexterity  (if  the  word  may  be  applied  to  the  use 
of  teeth  and  lips),  in  opening  the  fastenings  of  gates,  that  it 
becomes  a  very  difficult  matter  to  confine  them  to  a  particular 
pasture;  and  the  contrivances  resorted  to  for  baffling  their  inge- 
nuity suppose  more  or  less  of  a  corresponding  faculty  of  inven- 


162 


tion.  A  horse  shut  up  loose  in  a  small  stable,  will  with  his  nose 
break  any  glass  within  his  reach;  as  it  seems,  for  the  purpose  of 
admitting  fresh  air:  this,  too,  implies  a  process  of  inference. 
•The  horse  of  the  Bedouin,  who  is  a  member  of  his  family,  a 
guest  at  his  table,  and  a  party  in  every  occurrence,  acquires  a 
degree  of  intelligence,  as  well  as  of  docility,  which  very  far 
surpasses  any  thing  seen  elsewhere.  But  even  in  England, 
where  the  horse  is  a  slave  and  a  captive,  and  is  required  to  per- 
form a  quantity  of  labor  which  breaks  the  spirit;  some  few  indi- 
viduals display  a  sagacity  that  must  appear  incredible  to  those 
who  see  this  noble  animal  only  when  performing  his  task  upon 
the  road.  A  personal  knowledge  of  the  sensibilities  and  mental 
qualities  of  the  horse  would  tend  to  abate  the  cruel  demands 
made  often  upon  his  bodily  powers  by  business  or  pleasure.  The 
pleasure-loving  and  the  busy  should  remember,  that  if  a  horte  is 
a  machine,  he  is  a  conscious  machine. 

Note  X.  p.  68. 

Offence  ought  not  to  be  taken  at  the  employment  of  these 
terms,  in  speaking  of  the  more  intelligent  species  of  animals. 
The  distance  which  divides  man  from  the  brute  is  indeed  great; 
and  that  must  be  a  most  erroneous  philosophy  which  would  re- 
duce it  to  a  mere  difference  of  degree,  or  shade  of  superiority. 
And  while  we  distinctly  apprehend  the  nature  of  that  distinction, 
and  keep  in  mind  the  elements  which  constitute  the  moral  and 
intellectual  dignity  of  man,  no  danger  can  arise  from  allowing  to 
the  inferior  orders  all  the  excellence  they  may  fairly  challenge. 
On  the  contrary,  (as  the  author  thinks)  those  attempts  which 
have  so  often  been  made  to  degrade  human  nature  to  the  level  of 
the  brute,  are  best  met  by  a  strictly  conducted  comparison,  which, 
after  exhibiting  with  truth  and  advantage  the  powers  and  capa- 
bilities of  the  inferior  families  of  the  sentient  system,  holds  forth 
distinctly  the  new  and  higher  elements. of  the  human  constitution. 
Thus  is  human  nature  seen  to  raise  itself  to  the  summit  of  a  lofty 
scale,  and  to  take  its  rank  far  above  the  highest  of  the  subordinate 
species.  Shall  we  say  that  in  this  method  the  paramount  dignity 
of  man  is  enhanced  by  the  display  of  its  relative  nobility! 

"Illud  pro  certo  asseri  possit,"  says  Bacon,  {de  Augmentis,  lib. 
ii.  c.  2.)  ''grandia  exempla  haud  optiman  aut  tutissimara  aflferre 


153 


informationem.  Id  quod  exprimitur  non  insulse  in  peivulgatd 
ilia  fabula  de  philosopho,  qui,  cum  stellas,  sublatis  oculis,  intuer- 
etur,  incidit  in  aquam:  nam  si  oculos  demississit,  stellas  illico  in 
aqua  videre  potuisset;  verum  suspiciens  in  coelum,  aquam  in 
Btellis  videre  non  potuit.  Eodem  modo  ssepe  accidit,  ut  res 
minulsB  et  humilies  plus  conferunt  ad  notitiam  grandium,  quara 
grandes  ad  notitiam  minutarum."  Good  text  for  a  new  Essay  on 
the  Human  Understanding! 

Note  Y.  p.  69. 

If  the  Tphrase  functional  equality  needs  explanation,  it  may  thus 
be  given. — When  the  stomach  and  mouth  of  the  lion  or  tiger  are 
examined,  there  is  seen  an  apparatus  fitted  for  the  trituration 
and  decomposition  of  large  masses  of  animal  substance — muscle, 
ligament,  and  bone:  we  find  accordingly,  in  the  mechanical 
structure  of  the  mighty  eater,  the  highest  degree  of  muscular 
power  and  agility,  such  as  are  requisite  for  the  pursuit  and  con- 
quest of  the  largest  prey.  Here  is  the  first  set  of  correspon- 
dences. But  these  organs  and  instruments  would  be  useless, 
unless  the  mental  constitution  of  the  animal  were  in  harmony 
with  its  bodily  mechanism.  Fierceness,  courage,  promptitude, 
wariness,  patience,  are  the  qualities  that  are  the  proper  concom- 
itants of  such  a  stomach,  and  of  such  gastric  agents.  The  ani- 
mal exhibits  a  perfect  equipoise  of  organs,  functions,  and  pro- 
pensities. What  were  the  chylopoetic  viscera  of  the  tiger,  con- 
joined with  the  temper  and  mental  faculty  of  the  ox? 

On  a  like  principle,  the  high  dignity  and  noble  destiny  of  man 
might,  with  the  strictest  reason,  be  argued  in  detail  from  the 
parts  and  correspondences  of  his  physical  conformation. 

Note  Z.  p.  75. 

When  the  composition  of  forces  in  circular  movements,  or  the 
path  of  projectiles,  or  the  acceleration  of  falling  bodies,  or  when 
the  diminution  of  the  intensity  of  heat,  according  to  the  distance 
of  its  emanation,  or  when  the  velocity  of  sound,  and  a  hundred 
other  laws  of  the  material  world,  are  at  once  ascertained  by 
experiment,  and    demonstrated    abstractedly    by    mathematical 


154 


science;  and  when  it  is  found  that  the  theoretic  or  hypothetical 
reasoning  is  borne  out  by  experiment;  not  only  is  the  certainty 
of  the  two  methods  of  investigation  established  by  their  exact 
agreement;  but  we  are  furnished  with  a  striking  proof  of  the 
absolute  harmony  which  reigns  through  the  universe;  at  least  in 
every  instance  in  which  we  have  the  opportunity  of  bringing  in- 
dependent principles  into  comparison.  Let  it  be  remembered,  that 
no  possible  constitution  of  the  material  world  could  have  made 
mathematical  truths  other  than  they  are.    Whatever  might  have 
been  the  mechanical  principles   of  the   universe;   whatever  the 
composition  or  powers  of  its  elements;  certain  curves  could  have 
had  no  other  properties  than  those  they  actually  possess;  and  the 
relation  between  the  square  and  the  cube  in  numbers  must  have 
remained  unalterable.     Now,  when  it  is  found  that  the  material 
system  actually  and  precisely  conforms  itself  to  these  unchange- 
able (shall  we  say  eternal?)   principles,  we   may  either  suppose 
that  the   agreement  is  the  product  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator, 
who  has  so  adjusted  the  machinery  of  the  universe  to  those  unal- 
terable truths;  or  we  may  affirm  that  it  is  the  result  of  a  necessary 
relationship;  that  is  to  say,  that  the  mechanical  or  chemical  law 
could  be  no  other  than  an  expression  of  mathematical  principles. 
The  inference  would  be  nearly  the  same  in  either  case.     If  what 
may  seem  the  more   religious  supposition  be  adopted,  then  we 
may  confidently  assume  that  He  who  has  followed  the  rule  of  a 
perfect  harmony  in  one  part  of  his  work,  has  done  so  also  in  other 
parts.     Or  if  we  take  the  latter  supposition,  that  the  correspon- 
dence between  mathematical,  mechanical,  and  chemical  principles 
is  nothing  more  than  a  necessary  relation,   then  we  may,  with  a 
like  confidence,  assume  that  the  law  of  relation  runs  through  the 
universe;  and  if,  in  turning  from  mathematical  and  mechanical 
to  metaphysical  science,  we  find  an  exact  correspondence  be- 
tween all  trutlis  and  facts  on  the  one  side,  while  on  the  other, 
nothing  presents  itself  but  an  inexplicable — an  astounding  con- 
trariety, nothing  but  "whimsical  inconsequences,"  the  presump- 
tion against  the  latter  will  fall  little  short  of  a  demonstration  of 
its  falseness. 
f       There  ought  to  be  the  same  sort  of  concord  between  the  physi- 
}     ology  of  man  and  abstract  or  metaphysical  truth,  which  we  find 


165 


to  exist  between  mathematics,  and  mechanics,  and  optics,  and 
acoustics,  and  chemistry.  But  now,  l«t  it  be  supposed  for  a  mo- 
ment, that  a  discordancy  between  these  sciences  were  discovered; 
what  course  should  then  be  taken,  or  how  should  we  decide  be- 
tween abstraction  and  experiment?  We  reply,  that  the  abstract 
science,  having  the  advantage  of  a  perfect  system  of  notation, 
must  be  allowed  to  stand  its  ground  in  opposition  to  experiment; 
for  this  reason, — that  in  the  investigation  of  nature  by  the  method 
of  experiment,  there  must  be  assumed,  in  almost  every  case,  a 
possibility  of  error,  arising  either  from  the  faultness  of  our  method, 
or  its  incompleteness;  for  it  may  happen  that  some  hidden  cause 
has  escaped  our  observation. 

The  case  is  just  reversed  in  the  instance  of  an  apparent  con- 
trariety between  metaphysical  science,  and  the  knowledge  of  hu- 
man nature  as  acquired  by  common  observation.  For  the  for- 
mer, possessing  only  a  vague,  variable,  and  fallacious  system  of ' 
notation,  is  destitute  of  demonstrative  force;  and  its  conclusions  " 
can  scarcely  ever  rise  to  the  level  of  indisputable  truth.  On  the 
contrary,  the  common  knowledge  of  human  nature  has  an  advan- 
tage even  over  physical  experiment,  inasmuch  as  in  its  great 
principles,  it  rests  not  on  the  observations  of  a  few  philosophers, 
but  is  attested  by  the  consciousness  and  conduct  of  all  mankind. 
In  a  word,  mathematical  and  experimental  philosophy  stand 
related  to  each  other,  in  respect  of  their  certainty,  nearly  as 
equations;  the  difference  being  against  the  latter  by  the  amount 
of  a  very  small  deduction  for  possible  error.  But  no  absolute 
estimate  can  be  formed  of  the  relation  between  metaphysical 
science  and  the  experimental  knowledge  of  human  nature,  be- 
cause no  positive  or  definite  expression  can  be  given  of  the  phi- 
losophical value  of  the  former.  In  any  particular  instance  it  is 
as  if,  in  looking  to  the  data  of  a  problem  in  arithmetic,  the  figures 
expressing  one  of  the  quantities  were  blurred,  or  partly  oblitera- 
ted, so  that  it  was  impossible  to  decide  whether  it  should  be  read 
901  or -001. 

Note  A  A.  p.  77. 

The  limits  and  intention  of  this  Essay  forbid  that  any  exempli- 
fication should  be  attempted  of  that  method  of  combined  obser- 


'0 


156 


v&tion  and  analysis,  of  which  the  developement  of  the  faculties 
during  the  season  of  infancy  might  be  the  subject.  The  speci- 
mens of  this  kind  that  are  afforded  by  Brown  (as  in  Lecture 
xxiii.  vol.  i.  p.  514),  have  in  them  far  too  much  that  is  metaphy- 
sical, and  far  too  little  that  is  physiological.  We  should  suppose 
that  the  lecturer  constructed  his  illustrations  in  his  study,  rather 
than  drew  them  from  the  nursery. 

Note  B  B.  p.  79. 

The  transfer  or  attachment  of  the  irascible  feeling  to  its 
object  takes  place  much  later  than  its  developement  as  a  vague 
emotion.  The  infant  is  petulant  and  irascible,  long  before  it 
conceives  anger  against  the  supposed  author  of  an  injury.  But 
the  periods  of  the  rise  of  these  and  other  emotions  vary  by  the 
difference  of  many  months;  and  the  variation  indicates  the  char- 
acter, and  might  sometimes  suggest  the  specific  method  of 
education. 

Note  C  C.  p.  80. 

Nearly  all  the  descriptions  which  President  Edwards  gives  of 
the  process  of  volition  (for  example,  in  the  first  and  second  part 
of  his  Inquiry),  are  true  only  of  certain  complex  instances  of 
determination,  wherein  antagonist  desires  are  present  to  the 
mind.  It  seemed  to  him  necessary  to  his  argument,  to  display 
the  mental  operation  at  large,  in  order  to  exhibit  the  influence  of 
the  predominant  desire,  and  by  that  means  to  prove  that  the 
volition  is  ruled  by  motive,  and  is  not  contingent.  But  volition 
is  not  contingent,  that  is  to  say,  is  not  uncaused,  even  though 
there  be  (as  often)  no  predominant  desire;  or  when,  after  a 
longer  or  shorter  conflict,  the  mind  decides,  not  by  what  seemed 
the  strongest  desire,  but  by  a  new  and  unimportant  suggestion, 
springing  up  at  the  moment  when  the  bodily  powers  are  standing 
(if  we  might  so  speak)  waiting  for  command. 

Note  D  D.  p.  81. 

Brown,  in  the  Lecture  just  above  referred  to,  and  in  other 
places,  talks  of  the  reasoning  process  as  belonging  to  the  very 


^M 


157 


first  exertion  of  the  muscular  powers.  Does  he  not  in  these  in- 
stances suppose  far  more  than  is  contained  in  the  phenomena? 
We  should  imagine  any  tiling  as  soon  as  a  reasoning  from  the 
past  to  the  future  in  the  mind  of  a  babe.  The  lecturer's  hypoth- 
esis on  the  subject  of  cause  and  effect,  leads  him  naturally  to 
impute  a  mental  process  where  none  makes  itself  evident. 

Note  E  E.  p.  82. 

It  is  very  much  the  aim  of  education  to  cultivate  the  faculty 
of  continued,  or,  as  it  is  called,  close  attention.  And  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  this  power  is  of  high  importance,  and  much  needed 
in  all  the  occasions  of  life.  But  the  power  of  attending  to  more 
objects  than  one  at  the  same  time,  and  of  suddenly  directing  the 
whole  force  of  the  mind  from  one  object  to  another,  is  not  less 
important,  though  far  less  cultivated  or  thought  of.  It  may  be 
added,  that  the  power  of  complex  attention  recommends  itself  by 
its  connection  with  the  moral  faculties.  The  habit  of  thinkingr 
comprehensively  may  be  called — a  means  of  virtue. 

Note  F  F.  p.  8C. 

In  modern  times,  the  business  of  government  in  relation  to  the 
people  is  almost  confined  to  the  prevention  and  punishment  of 
crimes.  But  this  was  only  a  branch  of  the  care  of  the  legislator 
in  ancient  Greece,  in  Persia,  and  in  Rome.  To  protect,  and 
cherish,  and  reward  the  virtue  of  the  people  (that  is  to  say,  the 
specific  national  virtue),  was  the  first  and  principal  object  of 
every  institution;  the  punishment  of  crime  was  but  an  incidental 
affair.  A  proposition  to  revive  in  its  completeness  this  ancient 
idea  of  government,  would  seem  in  the  highest  degree  romantic 
or  puerile.  Yet  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  something  of  the 
kind  might  not  be  attempted.  But  it  is  a  paternal  or  patrician 
work  so  to  educate  the  people,  and  one  that  implies  a  restoration 
of  the  long-lost  relative  sentiments  which  should  connect  the 
higher  with  the  lower  classes.  High  principles  and  vivid  senti- 
ments of  public  virtue,  must,  to  some  extent,  prevail  among  the 
aristocracy  of  a  country,  if  the  lower  orders  are  to  be  thought  of 
otherwise  than  as  a  hostile  power,  that  must  be  held  at  bay  by 
14 


158 


force  and  skill.  Sad  derangement  of  social  order,  when  the  noble 
and  the  rich  stand  related  to  the  people  rather  as  protected  pro- 
prietors of  the  national  wealth,  than  as  conservators  of  the  com- 
mon prosperity!  It  must  not  be  affirmed  that  England  has  reached 
this  stage  of  political  dissolution.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  be 
hoped  that  a  restorative  process  has,  within  the  last  few  years, 
been  going  on;  and  that  the  idea  of  a  true  patriotism  has  been 
brought  out  to  view,  and  has  received  some  practical  homage 
among  public  men. 

Note  G  G.  p.  87. 

While  viewing  human  nature  and  the  history  of  man  as  an 
object  of  physiology,  it  would  be  quite  improper  to  entertain  the- 
ological distinctions,  or  to  inquire  into  the  cause  of  those  higher 
and  more  intimate  reformations — reformations  of  the  spirit,  which 
Christianity  challenges  as  its  triumphs,  and  teaches  us  to  ascribe 
to  an  emanation  of  Divine  influence.  These  restorations  of  the 
true  and  original  beauty  of  the  human  soul,  whatever  may  be 
their  cause,  take  place  in  accordance  with  the  constitution  of  the 
human  mind,  not  in  subversion  of  its  principles  of  movement, 
and  are  at  once  truly  divine  and  truly  natural.  But  putting  these 
emphatic  instances  out  of  the  question,  it  is  a  common  thing  for 
emendations  of  character,  within  certain  limits,  to  take  place 
(even  after  the  plastic  season  of  youth  is  gone  by),  in  consequence 
of  cogitation,  and  of  persevering  effort,  directed  or  guided  by 
an  abstract  idea  of  excellence. 

Note  H  H.  p.  88. 

The  operations  of  invention  and  abstraction,  and,  for  the  same 
reason,  the  moral  operation  of  self-advancement,  are  open  probably 
to  a  complete  analysis.  To  analyse  tliem  falls  not  within  the  in- 
tention of  this  Essay.  But  the  author  requests  the  reader  to  bear 
in  mind,  that  no  practical  inference  depends  upon  such  an  analy- 
sis, so  long  as  the  fact  that  these  operations  are  within  the  power 
of  human  nature,  remains  unquestionable.  It  might,  to  take  an 
illustration,  have  been  said  to  the  author  of  '-Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
3on,"  "Conceive  the  idea  of  finished  virtue  and  honor,  and  em- 


159 


body  that  idea  in  a  fictitious  narrative."  The  imposition  of  such 
a  task  would  not  have  seemed  preposterous, — it  would  have  been 
only  to  call  into  exercise  an  existing  faculty.  But  instead  of 
imposing  this  literary  task,  let  it  have  been  said  to  the  same  per- 
son, "Conceive  the  idea  of  virtue  passing  unhurt  through  scenes 
of  temptation  and  trial,  and  embody  the  idea  in  your  oion  conduct 
and  temper.  If  motive  be  wanting,  think  of  the  present  and  the 
future  rewards  of  goodness."  It  may  be  said,  that  this  latter  task 
is  one  of  far  greater  difficulty  than  the  first.  True:  but  the  second, 
not  less  than  the  first,  is  a  reasonable  requirement,  founded  upon 
the  existence  of  certain  faculties  in  the  person  to  whom  the  pro- 
position is  made.  And,  moreover,  if  the  second  task  be  more 
difficult  than  the  first,  it  stands  related  to  a  motive  incomparably 
more  powerful:  all  that  is  needed  for  overcoming  the  greater 
difficulty,  is  to  bring  the  infinite  motives  home  upon  the  mind. 
Now,  0,3  it  is  not  necessary  first  to  analyse  the  process  of  inven- 
tion before  we  can  reasonably  demand  from  a  writer  a  work  of 
fiction,  having  a  given  object;  so  neither  is  it  necessary  to  effect 
a  corresponding  analysis  before  men  can  reasonably  be  required 
to  cultivate  virtue.  Nor  could  any  result  of  such  an  analysis 
nuUifiy  the  reasonableness  of  the  demand.  If  the  metaphysician 
says,  I  have  resolved  what  you  term  the  process  of  self-education 
into  a  series  of  physical  causes;  no  sense  can  be  assigned  to  such 
an  affirmation  which  would  discharge  from  the  natural  history  of 
man,  the  fact,  that  reformation  is  a  frequent  event,  or,  which 
would  impugn  the  inference,  that  it  may  reasonably  be  looked 
for  and  demanded  from  mankind.  He  may  as  well  deny  to  man 
the  power  of  locomotion,  who  denies  him  the  natural  faculties  of 
virtue. 

Note  1  I.  p.  89. 

The  author  would  not  omit  the  opportunity  of  recommending  to 
the  reader  "An  Essay  on  Moral  Freedom,"  by  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Tully  Crybbace,  A.  M.  The  fourth  and  fifth  sections  of  that 
essay  bear  upon  the  subject  of  the  damage  or  injury  of  the  moral 
nature  of  man,  for  which  the  Gospel  provides  a  remedy.  The 
work  throughout  will  well  repay  an  attentive  perusal. — The  same, 
notwithstanding  some  imperfections,  may  be  said  of  a  volume 


160 


recently  published/  "On  the  Work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
Conversion,"  by  the  Rev.  J.  Howard  Hinton.  In  this,  and 
some  similar  works  of  the  day,  a  hopeful  effort  is  evidently  mak- 
ing to  throw  off  the  corruptions  of  that  putrid  Christianity,  which 
has  too  long  poisoned  all  the  atmosphere  in  some  quarters  of  the 
religious  world.  It  is  a  circumstance  of  much  significance,  that 
the  cleansing  energy  has  sprung  up  in  the  nearest  vicinity  of  the 
evil. 

Note  K  K.  p.  97. 

The  correspondences  between  the  astronomical  position  of  the 
earth,  and  the  structure  and  physiology  of  plants,  are  many  and 
admirable.  That  quick  alternation  of  temperature  which  is 
occasioned  by  its  diurnal  rotation,  is  essential  to  the  mechanical 
contrivance  by  which  the  ascent  of  sap  is  effected.  Then,  again 
this  alternate  heat  and  cold,  by  the  chemical  change  it  produces 
on  the  atmosphere,  and  within  the  plant,  is  necessary  to  the 
respiratory  functions  of  the  vegetable  system.  Again,  the  alter- 
nation of  the  seasons,  resulting  from  the  inclination  of  the  earth's 
axis  to  the  plane  of  its  orbit,  is  the  very  basis  of  vegetable  life. 
The  one  system  of  contrivances  supposes  the  existence  of  the 
other,  and  the  wellbeing  of  the  one  depends  upon  its  relation  to 
the  other.  Animal  life,  in  like  manner,  is  one  complex  mass  of 
relations  to  the  mechanical  and  chemical  laws  of  the  world;  and 
if  the  human  mind  were  exempt  from  such  relationship,  it  would 
not  only  be  an  amazing  anomaly  in  the  universe,  but  could  hold 
no  intercourse  or  sociality  whatever  with  the  external  world. 

Note  L  L.  p.  111. 

"Non  tamen  inter  hcec  existimandum,  libertatem  nostram  in 
indetenninatione,  aut  indifferentia  quadam  cequilibrii  sitam  esse; 
quasi  tcqualiter  in  utramque  partem,  et  adfirmativam,et  negativara, 
ac  in  plures  partes  diversas  propendere  oporteret,  cum  plura  nobis 
eligenda  proponuutur.  Hoc  SBquilibrium  usquequaque  impossi- 
bile  est;  nam  si  aequaliter  propenderemus  in  tria  eligibilia,  A,  B, 
etc,  non  possemus  cequaliter  propendere  in  A  et  non  A. 


161 


"Hoc  aequilibriara  etiam  prorsus  adversatur  experientiae  et  ubi 
nostra  intus  scrutabimur  adtentius,  semper  aliquam  causam,  sive 
rationem,  adfuisse  deprehendemus  quse  nos  in  earn,  quam  amplexi 
sumus,  partem  inclinavit,  quamvis  frequenter  id,  quod  nos  movet, 
non  percipiamus;  plane  sicut  vix  percipimus,  quare,  porta  aliqua 
egredientes,  pedem  dextrura  sinistro,  vel  sinistrum  dextro,  prse- 
posuerimus." — Theodic.  pars  i.  §  35. 

Leibnitz  does  not  here  deny  the  possible  equality  of  eligihles, 
but  the  absolute  indifference  of  the  mind  towards  them.  The 
demonstration  contained  in  the  first  paragraph  is,  like  many  such 
demonstrations,  very  convincing  inform,  but  totally  inapplicable 
to  the  subject,  and  therefore  of  no  value.  The  appeal  to  conscious- 
ness in  the  second  paragraph  is  pertinent,  and  it  supposes,  though 
*t  does  not  assert,  that  mode  of  determination  by  the  suggestion 
of  the  moment,  which  is  referred  to  in  the  Essay. 

The  course  of  human  life  is  replete  with  occasions,  in  which,  by 
the  choice  of  one  path  where  two  or  more  of  equal  promise  present 
themselves  (a  choice  not  determinable  by  moral  considerations)? 
the  entire  fortune  of  after-life  is  made  other  than  it  might  have 
been.  It  is  not  easy  to  shew  why  such  occasions  should  not 
belong  to  a  future  and  a  more  perfect  state,  as  well  as  to  this.  In 
fact,  to  deny  their  occurrence  demands  the  supposition  of  either  a 
state  of  absolute  inertness,  or  an  immediate  control  of  the  agency 
of  intelligent  beings  by  the  Divine  power,  or  the  abstract  impossi- 
bility of  both  real  and  apparent  equivalents.  So  few  elements  of 
cogitation  relating  to  the  future  life  are  afforded  to  us  in  the  Scrip- 
tures (our  only  guides),  and  these  elements  are  so  exclusively  of 
a  moral  order,  that  we  almost  unavoidably  take  up  a  very  restricted 
cowcep<i07i  of  that  future  condition  of  human  nature,  which  is  to 
give  a  full  expansion  to  its  original  powers.  The  great  difficulty 
of  conjoining  an  enlarged  conception  of  the  future  life,  with  the 
idea  of  freedom  from  all  that  is  evil,  leads  the  devout  mind  (and 
perhaps  properly)  to  confine  itself  to  the  elementary  and  para- 
mount sentiment  which  is  gathered  from  devotional  exercises. 

Note  M  M.  p.  114. 

There  is,  perhaps,  nothing  more  inconceivable  (we  do  not  say 
that  it  is  incredible)  than  the  doctrine  that  the  production  of  or- 


162 


ganised  bodies,  vegetable  and  animal,  is  a  developement  of  the 
parts  and  properties  of  the  microscopic  seminal  element.  Rather 
than  believe  this,  the  mind  gladly  acquiesces  in  the  belief  of  an 
immediate  exertion  of  creative  power  in  each  instance.  But  veg- 
etable and  ammal  functions  are  easily  attributed  to  mechanical  and 
chemical  powers  in  operation  upon  the  organs  of  life.  Yet,  per- 
haps, it  is  more  philosophical  to  believe  that  the  idea  of  difficulty 
or  of  facility,  in  the  one  case  or  the  other,  springs  altogether  from 
the  influence  of  an  idolum  tribus,  "estque  intellectus  humanus 
instar  speculi  inaequalis,"  &c. 

The  construction  of  a  plant  or  animal,  being  assumed  as  the  im- 
mediate effect  of  creative  power  and  intelligence,  and  the  laws  of 
the  material  world,  the  properties  or  powers  of  heat,  and  the  chem- 
ical properties  of  air,  water,  earth,  &c,  being  supposed,  then  the 
changes  that  take  place  in  the  history  of  the  organised  body  are 
all  resolvable  into  so  many  relations  of  proportion,  or  equilibrium, 
or  equivalence,  precisely  in  the  same  way  that  the  movements  of 
&  machine  are  so  resolvable. 

Note  N  N.  p.  115. 

Brown  usually  misunderstands  and  misrepresents  (not  wilfully, 
but  by  force  of  his  own  conceptions)  the  sense  of  his  predecessors. 
A  glaring  instance  occurs  in  his  attempt  (Lecture  VI.)  to  convict 
Locke  of  a  sophism.  Nothing  can  be  more  superficial  than  his 
•own  sophism  on  the  subject  of  physical  antecedents  and  conse- 
quents. But  it  is  one  which  runs  through  his  philosophy,  and  to 
be  effectively  exposed  must  be  followed  from  beginning  to  end  of 
his  four  volumes.  In  illustration  of  the  principle,  that  a  real 
relation  of  fitness  or  equality  is  the  actual  connexion  between 
physical  events,  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  passage  in  the  "Essay 
on  Human  Understanding,"  upon  which  Brown  makes  his  com- 
ment.— Book  iv.  chap.  iii.  sect.  25, and  this  compared  with  "Novum 
Organum,"  lib.  ii.  aph.  vi.  vii.  &c. 

Without  adopting  either  the  mechanical  theories  once  so  much 
in  vogue,  and  now  so  much  contemned;  or  the  chemical  hypothe- 
sis, to  which  more  respect  is  paid  in  our  times;  it  may  be  assumed, 
as  not  altogether  improbable,  that  some  such  advances  will  be 
made  in  physical  science  as  may  confirm  the  conjectures  of  Locke, 


163 


and,  m  part,  realise  the  glowing  anticipations  of  Bacon;  and,  at 
the  same  time,  expose  to  greater  and  greater  contempt  the  modern 
metaphysical  doctrine  of  causation.  It  is  consolatory  to  perceive 
that,  while  certain  modern  dialecticians  announce  confidently, 
that  science  must  stop  short  at  a  point  which  they  have  indicated — 
the  professors  of  natural  science  adhere  to  a  philosophical  modesty 
— a  modesty  which  is  nurse  of  hope,  and  mother  of  invention,  and 
allow  it  to  be  possible  that  our  successors  may  know  incomparably, 
more  than  ourselves.  "This  may,  however,  be  a  rash  inference 
(that  because  the  hidden  powers  of  nature  have  not  hitherto  been 
discovered,  they  never  will);  Bacon,  after  all,  maybe  in  the  right, 
and  we  may  be  judging  under  the  influence  of  the  vulgar  preju- 
dice, which  has  convinced  men  in  every  age  that  they  had  reached 
the  farthest  verge  of  human  knowledge.  This  must  be  left  to 
the  decision  of  posterity;  and  we  should  rejoice  to  think  that 
judgment  will  hereafter  be  given  against  the  opinion,  which  at 
this  moment  appears  most  probable." — Third  Dissertation,  by 
Professor  Playfair,  Encij.  Brit.  7th  ed.  p.  474. 

A  noble  confession,  and  worthy  of  a  philosopher!  How  unlike 
the  cold  dogmatism  that  reigns  in  the  modern  science  of  mind! 
But  the  spirit  of  philosophy  is  to  be  looked  for  only  among  those 
whose  minds  have  been  trained  under  the  influence  of  real  and 
substantial  sciences. 


9 


LOAN  DEPT. 


"SENTONILL 


LD2lA-40Tn-ll.'63 
(E1602slO)476B 


Berkeley 


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